How do I come across well at interviews when I've been a housewife for a long time

[Sunshine543]

I have lost all of my confidence. I'm 40 years old and have only ever had one job, I worked for a gas/elec company for 12 years and then we were all made redundant. I then had my children and have been a housewife for coming up to 10 years now but I need to think about returning to work.
I have zero interview experience, noone to provide me with references as my previous workplace is no longer there, I have also lost all my confidence in myself.
I am not good with computers but intend to take a course first so that should help. But how do I answer questions where they want examples of different situations? I can hardly even remember my working life as it was pre kids, feels like a lifetime ago.
I do have an education up to a university degree but I have never used it . Help!

Agree about finding a job which best matches your skills

It's not negativity about parenting to explain that employers won't be impressed by it. OP wants a job, pretending that she'll get one by taking about her experience as a parent won't help her.

I'm not negative about parenting. I just don't find it a useful skill at work.

Parenting has taught me so much. It's been the hardest job ever. Of zero relevance at work however and a shared experience with so many that it doesn't explain why I'm better than the next candidate.

You should never feel that parenting isn't valuable as an experience but you do need to show what you know about the particular workplace you are applying to. Parenting is a narrow experience in a workplace and OP knows this. Start getting experience as a volunteer. This will give you confidence and show you what you need. It will also help you identify what you need to develop

What about agency care work instead. Admin isn’t a great choice if you aren’t good at computers. Is what about a teaching assistant or LSA.

Why don't you do a bit of casual work locally. Stuff like helping a small catering business with some food prep or deliveries. If there is anything at all you are good at from your SAHM years, from baking and ironing to organising household expenses or remodelling a room, do it for a short time for a bit of money as a freelance/self-employed person while you are doing the computer refresher course. Then you'll have recent and current work experience. You don't need to admit on your CV that you only did something once or twice.

Incidentally there are loads and loads of free training courses for counsellors at the moment as there is a shortage of the low cost, low paid ones the NHS need to meet the huge downturn in MH post-Covid. If you were a calm mum and a good listener, those are transferrable skills and the gov are training people for free.

Things like this, which seem small, can get you back into the world of work. I started by running my own small business 2 hours a week (NOT MLM!) and waitressing for a mate's catering company. Over the years those 2 hours a week became a PT job with a well-known organisation and my own freelance work alongside.

This is a good idea. There is a desperate shortage of care workers throughout UK post-Brexit. You'd walk into a job, and being a housewife is actually a good skill - as it's a fair amount of homely duties - making tea, feeding people, cleaning up, singing songs etc as well as the more skilled work which you'd learn on the job.

I reckon you'd have a couple of job offers within 24 hours if you chose care work.

I wouldn't worry about that now. I think you need some smaller steps first like volunteering in areas you are interested in, some courses, building a network. Have you looked at Skills assessment | National Careers Service. And I'm going to agree with others and say to build some voluntary experience and complete courses rather than speak about parenting as relevant experience to professional competency questions. I interview a lot, and I would struggle to take someone seriously who did this - sorry just being honest.

I’ve interviewed a lot of people.
Make sure you research the company well and the role, if you are going via a recruiter they can give you lots of tips. There are also a lot of resources online to help you interview.
You can pull experience from
your homelife, if you’ve handles family accounts etc - you can dress it up.
I’m sure things from your previous job will come back to you when you are applying.
be confident! They way you present yourself (not talking aesthetically) is important to, remember they’ll want a good fit for the existing team.
Remember if you don’t get the job sometimes, interview experience is still really handy, but also remember you have nothing to lose so really sell yourself!

Best of luck! X

I did loads of agency care work and agency TA work. It’s a great way into getting back into work after a break. Also, some care homes have a bank staff list so that’s also a good idea.

Thank you for your comments
By office/admin I meant similar to the job I did before which was customer services

Close to my home there are a few places advertising for staff , one is an insurance company full training given, one is a utility company full training given, and one is an online gambling company, full training given so I think this is the type I will be applying for .
Just want to make myself come across well when the truth is I'm being forced back to work due to divorce, I don't feel I have any skills and I am not able to be flexible at all , due to not having any childcare so can only be whilst kids are in school/wrap around, no evenings/weekends etc which a lot seem to want.
I cannot do care as I have a serious back issue so can not do bending/lifting

Tough circumstances for you

Let's reword this bit

^truth is I'm being forced back to work due to divorce, I don't feel I have any skills and I am not able to be flexible at all , due to not having any childcare so can only be whilst kids are in school/wrap around, no evenings/weekends etc which a lot seem to want.
I cannot do care as I have a serious back issue so can not do bending/lifting^

My previous role was in customer services. An important part of this role was (for example) meeting expectations, deadlines, maintaining a calm....defusing complaints (match this to job description) really match your skills to JD

My degree was in .....

In the last few years I have been supporting the family. I continued to maintain skills by....

I recently took volunteer work as.. I am in a position to return to work and wish to use my previous experience and skills.

Or something like the above

@CJat10 thank you so much

It helped me - every time!

I would ask someone you know from the "professional" working world to give you a few proper mock interviews. There's a bit of an art to getting them right (very formulaic, very easy to learn).
Google competency-based questions and prepare answers.
But, honestly I think you'll struggle with no experience in the last 10 years. You can overcome that - as others have suggested, what about retail work? Perhaps after a period of time you might be able to help out with aspects of admin (sorting the staffing rota, ordering stock, cashing up the till, helping to take deliveries, opening store card accounts etc) that you can take forward in your search for an admin job.
There's still a mass staffing shortage, so get a bit of a CV together and I'm sure you'll be fine.

Oh and I must add, in your position, don't be afraid to lie. I don't mean a big lie. But do you have a friend with their own business who would let you say you did some brief filing and email management for them?
I got my first gig after Uni by saying, fraudulently(!), that I did some basic admin at my Uncle's car repair garage. Noone would look twice at me before doing so.
Once you can say you've done a couple of months of something, you'll be OK.

Why not go for a role that doesn't require any experience, where they'll train you on the job? Plenty of call centre roles will do that. With a good salary. And they offer a bonus each month to boot.

Are you sure admin is the right target field for you? Admin jobs are declining, and generally fairly heavily sought, as it is and they are now pretty much all IT-based.

I agree. There’s very little that a SAHP could say to me about their skills in raising a family that wouldn’t have me raising an eyebrow - the majority of us in my team raise families in addition to working, so when I’m interviewing I’m looking for specific work related skills, not child-rearing ones. The rest is just part and parcel of being a working parent and I would question why anyone would expect me to employ them with nothing more than enthusiasm and a belief that they have somehow contributed more to their children as a SAHP than I have to mine. Be very careful about how you word your years out of the workplace.

I would look at getting as much work experience as you possibly can - whether that’s volunteering, or doing some online courses, or going back to college, or whatever. If you are going to draw on previous non-work related experience then be very specific as to the skills you gained and how you can apply them to specific tasks. If it’s a competency based interview then have 3 or 4 scenarios that you can draw upon - make them as work related as possible. Also - have you thought about speaking to a careers advisor or (reputable) life coach to help you build your confidence? Good luck 😊

Also, nobody is actually in a position to vouch for the quality of your parenting. You could be doing an all-around shit job at it and nobody would know, or you could merely be shit at the parts of it you're trying to sell as work-relevant. Plenty of people are, after all.

Any old friend isn’t always acceptable to new employer at all.

I wrote long standing acquaintance in a confusing form (which to me is what my ‘friend’ is who I certainly had no contact with during Covid even but they are a Manager with some time in the same role so longevity and we’ve known each other some 20+ years) (reputable - wrong) they wrote friend and it become a disqualifying reference very easily. I was advised to find other references 6 days prior to start. I got by but only because I’d become friends never intentionally with an ex colleague from a company in administration within past two years who I’d shortly worked with. I haven’t told my oldest pal of 20+ years their reference meant not much. I don’t know what I would have done if fate hadn’t had me back working later at another company with ex colleague from one time we worked with a company who folded.

I'd recommend getting a voluntary job. It'll help boost your confidence, I don't know about you, but when I left school I spent years looking after my mother and then thought I'd no skills to offer to an employer. I thought all I was any good at was housework. So just in case being at home has knocked your confidence a bit, volunteering can help with that.

Check out your local college. They might be running a Women's Returners course. It might cover basic admin/IT skills, and could even have a work placement.

Look into other courses as well which give a longer work placement, such as apprenticeships/ Higher Level Apprenticeships. These would pay you a salary as well.

I noticed you mentioned you'd maybe like to work in insurance. That might be difficult if your IT skills aren't up to scratch. I worked in insurance for a while. Never again. I found the system they used (Open Gi) tricky to get used to, and I've been using computers a lot for years.

Good luck with getting a new role 💐🍫

How's it going OP?
You mention interviews. I think the best way to shine is to research the role and the company very well and show real interest in the company. Think through how you would cope with different situations if you were given the job (tricky clients, late payments or whatever else you might have to deal with) and seem keen to troubleshoot for them. Don't mention being a housewife. Do a tiny bit of freelance work so you can say you were at one company for 12 years, then freelanced while DC were young and now you have retrained as you want to move into full time employment.