From the Bus to the Clinic
Karen never set out to drive a bus. But for years, it was the highest paying job she could find, and so she showed up, drove the route, and made it work. The years of physical strain eventually took their toll. Driving a bus is hard on the body, and Karen knew it was not a career she could sustain as she got older. When a workplace injury forced her to take a full year off to recover, she faced a choice most people spend a lifetime avoiding: start over completely. She decided to become a phlebotomist.
As she worked through her coursework, her then supervisor and now close friend suggested she visit Dress for Success Triangle to help make the leap from public transit to healthcare. Karen signed up for the Going Places Network, a ten week job acquisition program, and got to work.
Reframing Years of Experience
One of the first things the program helped her do was see her experience in a new light. Working with advisors, she learned how to translate the skills she had built behind the wheel into language that resonated in a medical setting. Customer service. Reliability. Working under pressure. The experience was there all along. She just needed help framing it. What she found inside the classroom moved her just as much as the career tools did.
“It helped me to see professional women between the ages of 30 and 60. It wasn’t just young people looking for a job, but women of all ages. It was nice to see that I wasn’t the only 60 year old looking for employment.”
Karen sat in class alongside engineers, chemists, and women with master’s degrees and PhDs, all navigating their own professional transitions. The shared experience of sitting in that room together became its own kind of fuel.
“It was a warm feeling to know that I wasn’t alone. We were all women going through struggles within our different industries, but we were going through them together.”
Finding Her Voice in the Interview Chair
The mock interview practice turned out to be one of the most valuable parts of her experience. Karen had not been on a formal interview in years, and it showed at first. She stumbled through some of the harder questions, including the ones that ask you to look inward. Volunteer interviewers worked with her on behavioral questions, the kind that ask about challenges, weaknesses, and how you handle pressure under difficult circumstances. By the end of her sessions, the feedback had shifted completely. Interviewers told her she was answering questions as though she had prepared for them but not rehearsed them, a balance that is genuinely difficult to achieve. Her story based answers were landing exactly as they should.
She landed a job as a phlebotomist before the class even ended.
Paying It Forward
Today, Karen loves her work. She finds it both challenging and rewarding, and she has been able to secure a higher income while doing something that directly gives back to her community. She cares for patients every day, the kind of work she was always meant to do. And she is paying it forward. Karen now hosts groups of women who are interested in making the same career transition she made, walking them through how to answer the interview questions that once tripped her up. The student has become the coach.
Her journey from the driver’s seat to the clinic is a reminder that it is never too late to choose a different path, and that the right preparation, and the right community of women, can make all the difference.
The Going Places Network is a ten-week job acquisition program offered through Dress for Success Triangle. Learn how to join the next cohort.
