The Interview Question That Made Me Realise I'd Been Out Too Long
Michelle Yeo
March 25, 2026
I was in an interview for an operations role at a logistics company. Things were going fine. Standard questions about my experience, my approach to problem-solving, team management. All stuff I could handle. Then the interviewer asked: "What project management tools do you use?" And I said: "Excel and email, mainly." The silence was not great. Turns out the entire industry has moved to Monday.com and Asana and Jira and a dozen other platforms I'd never touched. When I left work in 2020, we used Excel trackers and Microsoft Project. That was normal. Now it sounds prehistoric.
The catch-up sprint
I went home that day and signed up for free trials of every tool I could find. Monday, Asana, Trello, Notion. I spent a week learning the basics — not to become an expert, but to at least have an answer next time someone asked. The thing is, these tools aren't complicated. If you can use Excel, you can use Asana. The concepts are the same: tasks, timelines, ownership, status updates. The interface is just newer and shinier. But not knowing they existed made me look out of touch. And when you've got a five-year gap on your CV, "out of touch" is the last thing you want to project.
What I say now
"I've worked with Monday.com and Asana, and I'm comfortable picking up new tools quickly." It's technically true. I have worked with them — for about a week. But I understand how they function and I can have an intelligent conversation about them. Is this slightly misleading? Maybe. But so is every interview. Everyone stretches their experience a bit. The key is being able to back it up if they ask you to demonstrate. The broader point is this: if you've been out of the workforce for any length of time, spend a week updating yourself on the tools in your industry. Not the big strategic trends — the actual day-to-day tools. That's where the gap shows fastest.
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