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A relatively short career break to finish her master’s and spend time with her young child became a major stumbling block when Suad Aldarra sought to resume her career in technology.

Suad achieved first class honours for her Master’s in Data Analytics at NUIG and her thesis project, which focused on applying textual analytics and machine learning techniques for hate speech detection in news articles, won several awards. However, she found that prospective employers consistently questioned her decision to take a one-year career break to the point that she was unsuccessful in interview after interview for a further two years.

Now living in Dublin, Saud credits Women ReBOOT, which she did in October 2021, with helping her to turn around the negative experience of looking for work.

“It kept happening,” Suad says. “I kept getting my maternity break flagged on my cv, directly or indirectly, and it started to become a concern as one year became two years. I started to lose my confidence bit by bit after every interview.”

Suad, who completed a degree in software engineering at Damascus University in 2008, had to leave Syria for Egypt in 2012 when her country became engulfed in civil war. “Then I was lucky enough to get a job offer to come to Ireland and work as a software engineer. I always said engineering saved my life,” she says.

Initially based in Galway, Suad worked as a data scientist in New York and Ireland for Unicef before taking her career break. Now living in Dublin, she credits Women ReBOOT, which she did in October 2021, with helping her to turn around the negative experience of looking for work.

“It was brilliant. I definitely recommend it. My advice is to do it, enjoy it and make the most out of it,” she says.

“The most important thing is that it brought my confidence back. It was very good to be connected to other women who were in the same boat as me, struggling with coming back from a break.”

“My career is very promising now. I feel back on track and that I didn’t have to start from scratch. I don’t look at that gap as a huge waste of time because I managed to turn it into a success." 

Suad found the mix of modules on the programme excellent. “I think the most important part was the emotional intelligence assessment because that really helped me understand and unpack all my previous emotional experience at work and understand my strong and weak points and focus on them,” she says.

Through Women ReBOOT, Suad secured a position as a Data Scientist with Dell Technologies. “It’s very good. My role is new in the team that I am in, so it was challenging at first to shape my role but my manager gave me enough flexibility to shape it along with his support and confidence in my diverse set of skills,” she says.

“My career is very promising now. I feel back on track and that I didn’t have to start from scratch. I don’t look at that gap as a huge waste of time because I managed to turn it into a success. In fact, I wrote a book during that time, and it’s going to be published by Penguin Random House, so I’m really excited.”

Suad’s memoir, I Don’t Want To Talk About Home, will be published in July 2022.

Read more Stories from our Alumina

We are delighted to announce the launch of our 2022 Women ReBOOT programme. This is open to Women with IT qualifications and experience who are ready to return following a career break.