Goldman Sachs created a name for the problem of reentry that the resume had made visible.
In 2008, Goldman Sachs launched a program it called the Returnship, a paid internship-style position designed for experienced professionals who had been out of the workforce, typically for caregiving.1 The name was a deliberate reframing: not a demotion, not a restart, but a structured bridge between a career gap and re-employment.
The program addressed a problem that the standard resume made visible. Reverse-chronological job histories treated any gap as a liability, and automated screening systems could reject candidates with employment breaks before a human reviewer saw the application. Women, who disproportionately left the workforce for caregiving, were disproportionately affected.2
Other companies followed. By 2023, more than 200 organizations offered return-to-work programs modeled on the Goldman Sachs approach, including IBM, JPMorgan Chase, and General Motors.3 Carol Fishman Cohen, co-founder of the career reentry firm iRelaunch, helped popularize the concept and advised companies on program design.
The returnship formalized an acknowledgment that the linear career path the career ladder assumed did not describe how many people actually lived. The program existed because the system had created a penalty for leaving and needed a mechanism to undo it.