Chip Chick
Last Friday, this 34-year-old man was going through the interview process for a company he’d previously worked for. He had his third round of interviews, usually the last round before he was officially hired.
The company was under new management, and since he’d had a positive experience when he worked for the company before, he thought it was worth it to apply again.
His third interview was with the direct line manager, the direct manager, and the recruiter who’d originally contacted him about the open position.
While in the interview, one of the managers questioned why there was a 9-month work gap in 2020 on his resume, questioning whether it was related to the pandemic. He answered honestly and said that it wasn’t, and the manager requested for him to expound on that.
“I was getting visibly upset and answered that I needed time to grieve after the loss of family. The person who would be my manager’s manager just blatantly said, ‘A loss of a loved one doesn’t justify a 9-month gap in your resume,” he said.
By this point, he was doing his best to hold back tears. Two weeks before lockdowns started in 2020, his mother, father, and two siblings passed away in a car accident. An intoxicated truck driver drove through a red light and ran into his father’s vehicle as they were driving home.
Normally, he would have been in the vehicle with his family, but that night, he was at his then-boyfriend’s, now fiancé’s house five minutes away.
“I see it as a blessing and/or a curse that I was not in that car. I was candid with the manager-in-question and said, frank and bluntly, ‘Perhaps losing a loved one doesn’t warrant that long of a gap, but losing both my parents and my siblings at the same time in a car crash does,'” he explained.
Once he said this, the room was silent, and everyone was incredibly uncomfortable because none of the interviewers knew how to respond. Then, he apologized and told them he had to leave the interview.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
