▲ 17 r/InterviewVip
Honestly, I thought I just hated work, period. Turns out I was just in the wrong job.
For most of my adult life, I bounced between retail jobs and admin/office work, but a while ago I randomly applied for an industrial job with good pay, nice benefits, the whole thing. I spent a lot of time reading about the trade, somehow had a great interview, and they offered me the job.
The place I work at now is about 85% men, and a lot of the women there are in office roles. Not many of them are out there doing the hands-on skilled trade work that I do. My crew is all men, most of them in their mid-40s to early 60s. I'm 31.
Before I started, honestly, I was bracing myself for the worst. I expected them to talk down to me, or treat me like a child, or have to deal with creepy comments all the time. But my crew turned out to be really great. They treat me like I actually belong there. I'm learning a somewhat difficult skill set, and when something finally clicks for me, they're genuinely happy for me. Sure, I've gotten a few strange looks and some staring from men in other areas, but it's nowhere near as bad as I had built it up in my head.
I really wish more women would consider skilled trades. I never expected to enjoy work like this, let alone feel proud of what I'm learning every day. The work can be satisfying in a way I never found in customer service or sitting at a desk, and the people who will accept you might surprise you.
u/Due-Examination-3594 — 4 days ago
▲ 6 r/InterviewVip
I withdrew from an interview at a late stage after they asked me to justify a gap in my resume because I was caring for my mother
I've been looking for work since February after leaving my last job in operations at a distribution company. The gap in my resume is about eight months. Not because I was fired or was sitting around doing nothing. My mother had a major health scare at the beginning of the year, and I became the person managing her specialist visits, prescriptions, insurance paperwork, and basically making sure her daily life didn't fall apart while she recovered. She's doing well now, so I started applying again.
Most recruiters have asked me about the gap, and I usually say I was dealing with a family medical situation that has now been resolved. Most of the time, it stops there. A few weeks ago, I reached the final stage for an admin coordinator role, and honestly, it seemed very well suited to my background. The previous interviews had gone really well. Then the director joined the final call and kept coming back to the gap. He asked whether the "family stuff" could happen again, whether I had "coverage in place," and whether there was documentation proving that the situation was over. I tried to stay professional, but it no longer felt like a conversation about my experience. It felt like they were deciding whether my life would make me a liability to them.
Near the end, he said the team needed someone "fully present, with no outside disruptions," and asked me to send an email with a brief written explanation of the gap before they continued. After the call, I told the recruiter I wanted to withdraw. She sounded surprised and said I had probably been their strongest candidate, and that maybe he was just being too blunt because the department had been burned before by past experiences. Now I keep second-guessing myself: did I walk away from a good opportunity in a very difficult job market?
I understand that employers want dependable people. I also need a paycheck. But if this is how they speak to me before I'm even hired, I'm worried about what things would be like once I'm inside the team. Has anyone else withdrawn this late in the process because of how a company handled a resume gap? I can't tell whether I was protecting myself or overreacting.
u/Due-Examination-3594 — 11 days ago
