Dear Annie: I've been a stay-at-home mom for the past five years, and I'm ready to go back to work. My background is in finance and accounting, and I have an MBA in strategic management, but I'm at a loss as to how to sell myself after such a long absence from the corporate world. Especially in this hypercompetitive job market, will this big gap in my resume put me out of the running? — Just Judith

    Dear J.J.: Not necessarily. "Success in re-launching your career is less a factor of how long you've been away and more a matter of your attitude and how you present yourself," says Mary Anne Walsh, a New York City-based executive coach.

    Bear in mind that getting back up to speed "usually takes about a year," she adds. "Don't get discouraged if it takes that long to reestablish your professional identity, or create a new one, even if you're doing everything right."

    Walsh approaches the process with her clients in three steps. First, she says, "People who have been away from the business world for a while often find the idea of going back to be pretty daunting. They lack self-confidence. So first we work on that."

    One way to get your confidence back is to "identify what's important to you at this point in your life. What is your purpose? Once you establish a goal and an overarching sense of what you want this stage of your career to look like, you can move on to the practical task of pinpointing which special aptitudes and skills you've developed -- either before you left the workforce or in the years since then -- that employers might want."

    These include a few traits that many job seekers undervalue in themselves, Walsh says: "Hiring managers look for maturity, stability, and dedication, and you may have more of these qualities now than you did when you were younger."

    Once you've determined what you want to do and clarified what qualifies you to do it, write a resume that emphasizes both your professional accomplishments in your former corporate life and what you've learned since then. Include any skills you've honed or acquired through volunteer work.

    A handy sample resume that may spark some ideas for you is available from the Five O'Clock Club, a national career-counseling group.

    Then start networking like mad, says Walsh: "Talk to as many people as you can in the field you're trying to get into, or get back into."