You should be addressing these comments to this poster, as I was quoting her:
All true and all completely inappropriate in the context we are discussing, namely, a conversation with a prospective new employer.
I’m happy to answer the ‘red flags’ question.
What I said was something along the lines of…
Flag one: I had three interviews with the company, and with each interview I waited at least 30 and once 50 minutes to be seen.
Flag two: At the third interview, the company director attended but her only contribution was to look at my printed resume and tell me that ‘people who had held jobs like mine’ were a particular way, very detail oriented with an inability to see the bigger picture. I politely disagreed and gave some examples of where I felt my ability to see the bigger picture had contributed to my success in those roles, but she did not appear interested and left the interview shortly after.
These two flags I raised with the recruitment agent and she reassured me that they were just going through a particularly busy time because they were so succesful, and that the director was actually a very people-oriented person but was probably just trying to come over as ‘more masculine’ , with with her being a more male-dominated industry(?).
Flag three: In my first weeks with the company, every client meeting I had consisted of the client expressing their frustration with the slow pace of progress and the bureaucracy of working with the company.
It was at this point that I realised I was not a good fit for the company and that I should look elsewhere.
I then moved onto talking about the kind of company I want to work in.
Yes, and you are the one who said (in post #13) that it was “much better” to say that you’d ignored red flags rather than saying the company was a mess. If someone follows your advice, how would you advise them to respond to the follow-up question “what red flags?”, or have you figured out that any possible decent response is going to circle back around to the company was a mess?
When you are trying to explain to this prospective new employer why you left a position after two months, I think it completely appropriate. If you take all of the blame upon yourself, you make yourself look weak, indecisive, and perhaps unemployable. (“Is this person going to quit my company after two months? It’s not worth taking a chance.” or “Is this person already in danger of being fired after two months? There must be something really wrong with them, so I’d better not hire them and find out what.”)
If you can split the blame, however, most employers are well aware there are bad situations out there. "I ignored the red flags (like tremendous turnover); I hired on and, while I value the experience, I discovered some pitfalls I hadn’t expected. I don’t want to waste their time, and I don’t think I am able to contribute meaningfully in their particular situation. I like to work where I can really feel like I am making a contribution. Here are my strengths and what I can add to your company … "
In the short term you need to be honest on the resume but just be super keen about how great the prospective new role is.
It’s also quite possible the crappiness of your current employer is well known.
I had a similar situation a couple years ago. I left a casino job that I liked but I was under paid for a new position with much more pay at a bank.
The downside, and I realized this the second day at the bank, was that the bank was a horrid place to work. The CIO was nuts. And she screamed. "Cause, ya know, screaming at people is a good management technique. Or something. It was, by far, the worst work environment I have ever seen as far as morale goes.
Anyway I ended up leaving in a rather not so nice manner. I laid into the CIO after she screamed at me over a problem I was trying to solve that a) I was never brought in on b) not really my problem and c) caused by my manager quitting.
When I interviewed for my present job they asked me about the last job. I explained that the work environment was just crazy and that the management managed by fear. I was honest and, since my work history was good and I tended to stay at companies for a decent amount of time, they were ok with it.
Now, I love my job. And, as an added bonus, I got more money than the bank was paying.
As an added bonus, you might want to check Glassdoor and see if there are negative reviews up. If so, you can let your perspective employers know about them.
Slee
Generally it’s a bad idea to quit until you have the offer in hand from the next.
Leave this current job on your resume until you have worked at your next for over a year.
Did you leave your previous position in 2014 or 2015? If you were there until after January 1, I’d say just make the career dates on your resume no more specific than years, and leave your current position off entirely.
If you left the previous position in 2014, it’s gotta go on and you need to think about the narrative you can honestly tell that doesn’t make you look like a whiner, or that you have a victim-mentality, and lets you avoid bad-mouthing anyone. “It’s just that I just love this opportunity!” is a good theme. They can see from your work history it’s not a pattern.
Never badmouth a former employer in an interview. Lots of people are great workers who got in a bad situation. But there are also lots of whiny, passive aggressive, professional victims who play the “management is so mean” blame game. And the person interviewing you had no way of knowing which kind of person you are.
People know there are bad situations, and they can read between the lines. Stick with “They are really great people and I’ve really enjoyed working with them, but unfortunately it isn’t the right fit for me and I’m ready to move on.” Blame something neutral if you must, like “I found working in a family owned company is not right for me, and I’m excited to return to a large multinational.”
With your work history, you should be fine. You may miss some opportunities but you’ll still have plenty.
Yeah, too small to have a Glassdoor profile.
There are no gaps in my resume; I worked my last day at my old job, packed my bags, and started at my current job almost immediately.
Yeah, they’re not like terrible human beings or anything, they’re just very very difficult to work with. They are constantly hammering me over really subjective stuff. I hadn’t even been there a week before they put me on a plan because I wasn’t talking enough in meetings. I’ve endured crappy jobs before (they’re all a little bit crappy in their own way, right?), but right now I feel like stepping in front of a train.
Missed the edit window, but I’m not stepping in front of a train, don’t report me please.
Would it be so bad to just say the company misrepresented the position? Nothing about how bad it is to work there, but that the work isn’t what you were led to believe.
I wouldn’t put a job on my resume that I’d only been at for a few months. The problem is that you might not even get a chance to explain it.
If you insist on mentioning it during the interview, just say that the role ended up being very different from what was described to you and it’s not something that is within your skill set.
Really, if you are on a PIP within six days, I wouldn’t even worry about your current job. Just show up to the office and use the time to look for a new one. Typically your first 90 days is either a honeymoon or a trial period. If you are already not meeting their expectations (even if they are bizarre), then expect to be fired soon.
I was in a similar position many years ago, right before the financial crisis. I had taken a job with a large insurance company and I instantly hated it. The hiring manager who brought me on had quit before my first day and our VP was a crazy bitch who just yelled at everyone and constantly threatened to fire me. After about a month, I actually sort of flipped out at her and told her to either fire me, show me what she wants done or just get the hell out of my face. She chose the latter and I rarely saw her. I actually ended up reporting her to HR for constantly berating my staff and she “retired” a few months later. But I spent most of time just sitting on my ass doing nothing for months.
Anyhow, the point is, I interviewed at a couple places and just told them that my boss quit and I literally have nothing to do all day and no one to do it for. Can’t argue with that.
When interviewing, assuming that the interviewing is the biggest A-hole in the world, as most people in corporate America tend to be. That is to say, these tend to be the sort of people who if you stay at a company 15 years, you have no drive or ambition and if you leave every few years, you’re a job hopper. IOW, I feel like half of the companies I ever interview at act as if they wouldn’t hire the sort of candidates who would want to work there, and yet they want you to work there more than anything.
On the other hand, if they can’t keep employees they may never fire him, because then there’s nobody to do his job.
You could be just being jerked around because your boss enjoys being an asshole, not because they are looking for ways to fire you.
Feel free to leave a two month job off your resume. If you get an interview, just call in sick at your current job that day. What are they going to do, fire you?
No, no, no. NEVER put something like that on a resume. That’s what the interview is for.
If you leave it off, just make very very sure of what you are signing on the application (assuming they have an application). Don’t put yourself in a situation where the omission is perceived to be a misrepresentation, which is in and of itself frequently grounds for no-hire or immediate termination.
Give two weeks notice. Maybe they’ll tell you don’t worry about it and escort you out of the building immediately, but do offer two weeks. You don’t want to burn any bridges. Your manager now might be a hiring manager somewhere else in ten years. I’ve seen it happen.
I was leaning towards yes, include it on your resume. But this sounds like reasonable advice. Some employers may see the 2 month job and toss your resume immediately.
I was going to bring this up. A lot of companies do background checks in the final stage of hiring. But I really don’t know how extensive they are, or if your 2-month job would show up on it.
I was in a similar position to the OP. I quit a shitty job after a couple months without having a new job beforehand. I left it off my resume for fear of appearing too flighty, and was hired again within a month. Luckily the shitty job did not come up, but I was pretty paranoid about it.
Like I said, once the new job has been held for a year +, you dont need to list the short term job anymore.
I’d leave it off. You’re looking for a good fit. End of story. If you get the job, you need a couple of weeks to wrap up other obligations. Or don’t give two weeks notice if not required to do so.
Wow, we must be leading parallel lives. I was at a small defense company that was slowly winding down and that didn’t have new contracts to cover old ones expiring so my own boss told me I’d be wise to start looking before the hammer fell. I got a job at another small company which looked great on paper, and I didn’t spot any red flags other than some weirdness with the fact my boss worked in Virginia and I was at their California office, so I would only see her sporadically.
Then I started, and almost immediately I knew something was wrong. My boss was always angry and I learned that everyone who had held my position lasted six months or less. The other employees who interviewed me actually apologized for not being able to tell me because the company ordered them not to talk about it during the interviews. The woman I worked for was an absolute witch and even from Virginia, she managed to make my life Hell across the country. The other employees ultimately confided in me and told me my boss (a VP) didn’t want a business development person to be in the California office, but the CEO did, so the VP’s solution was to torpedo every candidate that held the job. The employees even told me HOW I would be fired because it always followed a pattern. The funny thing is, they said, “you will be given an impossible task to do with not enough time to do it and then be told you are incompetent and laid off as a result”. Sure enough, I could see the impossible task coming, warned my wife to clear my calendar of any social/family obligations, and did one week’s worth of work in two days, working 18 hour days to get it done. No one had ever done that. The result? She the VP still nit-picked it and laid me off anyway. The employees at the office all took me out to lunch after I was canned as they had never seen anyone do that much work that quickly and felt especially bad I was given the axe.
I chose to leave the work off my resume since it had only been two months. I got hired very quickly after that, but the challenge was in transferring my clearance over because you cannot have a gap in the resume on that paperwork and it asks why you left the company. I simply said I was laid off and that a corporate re-alignment was moving the position back to Virginia. That was what the VP wanted done anyway, so I assume she got her way.
I would recommend sticking it out at the job to the degree you can still do it without ging crazy (i.e. do it half assed if necessary) and force them to fire you or lay you off rather than quitting, so you can at least get unemployment, which you usually can’t get if you quit. If you do quit or are fired/laid off before you get another job, I would leave it off the resume, and if it comes up in the interview, I would mention that a corporate realignment eliminated or changed the nature of the job. No one will ask beyond that as it is a small company, like mine was, because they do stuff like that all the time. Be careful how you phrase it though, because you want to make it clear that you are flexible and would have done the new job had that been an option. Most employers, if questioned, are only allowed to report dates you worked there if someone calls, so they won’t be able to ask about a PIP or other issues.