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Asking for Shabbat off in a job interview

Hello all, I hope everyone (who partook) had an easy and meaningful fast!

I will be having a job interview this week, this is at a place in my industry I have been pining to work at for a couple years now, and I just graduated from school for my respective career. I am supposed to call and set up an interview time tomorrow.

In that interview I plan to inform the boss that I am a religious Jew and would need Saturdays off, and I can’t work late on Friday evenings. Since this is a busy time of the Jewish year, I will also need to make clear my inability to work on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Ideally I will reassure him that after this period things will calm down? I will offer to work any Christian holidays as well, but that doesn’t seem likely as they will likely already be closed on those days.

However, I am very worried that as a newcomer to my industry who has to start at the bottom of the chain before I get to the position I have been to school for, this will make me not as marketable.

Honestly, I feel like worse comes to worse, if it is an absolute deal breaker to be hired, I would be willing to work Saturdays for a limited time, given it will lead to me having Shabbat off in the near future. I don’t want to do that but I need this job and my husband and I need me to get this job so he can take an internship, and if doing so gets me into my “dream job” and into this industry, maybe some short term suffering is worth the pay off.

How would you phrase this availability thing to a potential employer in an interview? I am worried I will overload him before I am even offered the job or I will come off as a “whiny Jew”. Do you phrase this more as a question or a statement? My last job wasn’t open on weekends so being shomer shabbos wasn’t a problem there. I feel like my career hinges on this interview and I don’t want to compromise my morals or religious convictions, but everyone is telling me I may have to for a while; any advice is appreciated.

submitted by /u/sludgebjorn
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Source: Reditt