But it's really hard to go knocking on the door of people you haven't worked with or talked to in almost a decade. It's easy to assume they won't be interested in connecting. Or if one doesn't respond, assuming the rest will.
Like you I've never had a job that didn't come from some kind of personal connection. It's really the key.
One of the questions I ask them when I turn in my letter of resignation is what do they need me to do so if I need to call them for a reference in two or three years, they will give me a good referral.
I don’t think I would have any problems getting hired by but one of my former managers.
I’ve also met local recruiter for lunch and always respond to non shady recruiters.
But as far as your wife, I would hope that most of her female former coworkers would be able to relate to the fact that some mothers take a break in their career to be caretakers and that most of her former male coworkers wouldn’t be knuckle draggers and understand too.
(1) I have a job atm. It's mostly the prospects that fear me out.
I can honestly say that I have never in over 25 years gotten a job based on blindly submitting my resume. My first paid development gig in 1990 was based on someone at another college reaching out to me based on some Mac shareware they found on the ftp Info Mac archives (yeah I’m that old).
My first job was based on an internship I had the year before from bugging the career center at college.
Every subsequent job has been based on either former coworkers recommendations or working with local external recruiters.