One of the big takeaways I’m getting from this thread is that 5 different hiring managers can ask the same question expecting 5 different answers. With the answer they are expecting as the right one while the others are varying degrees of wrong.
While somehow the applicant is supposed to know which answer it is they’re supposed to respond with.
I don’t miss interviewing at all.
No, they will not ask “How was working at ACME?”- that is rare. What they ask is “why are you leaving your current position” or words to that effect. Then you tell them how wonderful and great their company is, not say bad things about the old company.
Right.
Exactly! That’s what I’m saying too- since it’s within the same calendar year, the resume/CV doesn’t have to include it at all if you’re not marking out exactly what months you worked.
That can work for a position you had in the past; it doesn’t work so well for the position you have right now. For example, if they hire you, are you going to say that you can’t start for two weeks because you have to give notice at the job they didn’t know you had, or are you going to walk out without notice and hope you never need to be hired by any of the coworkers you’re leaving suddenly?
I don’t see why you don’t just say when you can start, rather than let them dictate it all to you. It’s none of their business- you just say “I can start on X date.” and negotiate from there.
You are (allegedly) unemployed, and yet you can’t start for weeks? What are you hiding?
Is there some legal problem that leaves you unavailable? Maybe a messy personal situation? There are other explanations besides another job, but without offering any explanation you’re letting them fill in the blanks, maybe by deciding there’s something they haven’t discovered that they really need to discover in case it may cause them to withdraw their offer.
I don’t know that it has to be so cloak-and-dagger. More than once in my career, I’ve negotiated to start 4-5 weeks after getting the offer, even though they wanted me right away. Nobody ever wanted to know why, although it was mostly so that I could have a couple of weeks off after quitting the old job.
All they’ve got to do is propose a start date a few weeks out and leave it at that. Who are you all working for that’s so nosey into what you’re doing, exactly when you worked, etc…? I haven’t experienced that at all in my career.
Why do you have to give two weeks’ notice to the current employer? I understand that it’s a courtesy, but if you’re leaving a terrible job, what are the consequences for saying “I’m sorry, I won’t be in after this Friday.”
If an employer can terminate an employee without notice, I don’t see why the reverse shouldn’t be true.
You certainly can, and sometimes that’s the right choice. However, the coworker you leave behind today might be the hiring manager you face tomorrow, and if they think based on your previous record that you might walk out on them without notice someday, they might not be so eager to hire you, especially if they didn’t share your negative opinion of that employer. It’s burning a bridge that you might not need to burn.
I’ve spent much of my career in some variant of government work. The current job application for the State of Kansas, for example, asks for the month and year you began and left your last three jobs; the online version asks for day/month/year.
I don’t know whether it would have made any difference or not to the OP, but one thing I learned to ask when interviewing for a job is, “What is the turnover rate in this position?” If it turns out that 3 people have held the job in the past 2 years, unless they can add that those individuals were all promoted within the company or otherwise explain why it’s not a red flag, it’s probably a sign that something’s wrong with the job or the company.
I really agree with this. Imagine going on a blind date with someone who dishes dirt on their previous relationship. Doesn’t matter if everything they say is true or not, it’s a red flag if they feel compelled to talk about it. Granted, a job interview and a blind date aren’t identical situations, but there are some similarities.
In this case the OP’s old job was far away from their current location, so there could be an issue. Plus, they’d have to explain why they left that job. And being unemployed didn’t used to help you get a job - though that may have changed these days.
I think many hiring managers can smell inconsistencies and what looks like withholding information. Since the OP has an excellent story about why they left, it doesn’t seem a good idea not to be honest - with the proper spin, of course.
I didn’t say they would. I was responding to your suggestion that it might be possible to not say anything at all
Which is what I was saying. Prepare what you will say in advance and anticipation of being asked; I think it can be done without lying in this case, but don’t assume the question won’t arise.
Some interviewers will notice that a question ‘why did you leave company X’ has been deflected and answered as ‘why do you want to work here instead’, and may probe with further questions about leaving company X. It would be good interview prep to anticipate that and prepare for it with an answer that addresses it directly, but diplomatically.
Yeah, this is my new opinion, after reading through the thread. My suggestion would be to have several layers of answers prepared.
Hopefully you need only the first layer (the innocuous pivot/brush-off), but if the interviewer notices and asks for more information, you can say something like “when I got into the position, I discovered it was not as it was described to me; I did what I could, but it hasn’t been a good fit,” or some such.
If the interviewer still insists on drilling down further, then you can offer something that will satisfy their curiosity but doesn’t implicate you or make you look like a problem employee — maybe, “there was a legal compliance issue which predated my arrival and which I wasn’t informed about prior to the hire; I engaged with it and tried to help clean it up, because after all that’s my job; but I’ve just discovered that there were two previous people in my position in the eighteen months prior who also wrestled with the same problem before me; I really don’t like giving up on a problem, but I’ve reluctantly decided this is not what I signed up for, and I’m looking forward to a new opportunity where I can make a positive contribution.” You don’t start with that final explanation, but you have it ready on the off chance you need it. And you make sure the pivot back to the positive is baked in at the end.
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Yeah, if they probe really deeply, then I guess it’s worth being prepared for that brutal frank honest description of the detailed issues, but be ready to describe it clinically - i.e. ‘this thing happened, causing this thing’ and ‘this attempt to resolve this thing did not succeed because x’ - not ‘this happened to me, and it was bad and I didn’t like it’
I interview constantly on both sides of my desk as part of my job. There are no right “answers”. HR will typically hand out a list of standard interview questions, but rarely have I ever seen anything on how to interpret someone’s actual response.
What people should take away is that interviewing is about connecting with the interviewer and proving you are the best fit for the job. It’s not about correctly answering a bunch of standardized questions correctly.
The challenge the OP has in looking for a new management job after only staying at his last one for 6 months or so is demonstrating that the reason it didn’t work out isn’t a reflection on him and his abilities.
Working in management is different from being an individual contributor in that you are actually responsible for running a portion of the business. As you rise up the ladder, it’s harder to explain away a job as “it just didn’t work out”. or “it wasn’t a good fit”. So while the OP has some good points as to why their job is “bad”, to a certain extent many of the things described are part of any management job:
Not that I think the OP is “at fault” or whatever. But if I were interviewing the OP for a management role, I would very much be asking about the circumstances of why they are leaving a job after 7 months. I would typically not be dissuaded by canned ambiguous answers. And I would be very interested in how the OP responded to these various challenges, what worked, what they would have done differently, and how they would apply those lessons in their next role.
My former employee forbade us from providing references beyond “yeah, I worked with Frank”. Since I had worked there for 30+ years, I didn’t have anybody who could provide a ‘real’ reference. There were people who had left before me, but I didn’t have contact info for them.
Every employer I have had in the last 30 years has forbidden giving real references.
But I have lots of former bosses, boss’s bosses and coworkers who have left the company I’m currently working at who are happy to give me a reference.
Similarly I am happy to provide a reference for my team members at MY prior employers, wherever they are working now.
Yeah, most companies will just confirm whether you worked there during the time period, and whether or not you left in good graces (i.e. were not fired for cause). Anything else and they think they’re liable for some sort of suit because it goes beyond factual information.
But your personal references can be people you worked with there for sure. I find it interesting that a lot of places in my experience rarely actually call them. I ask permission beforehand, and they usually let me know if someone actually calls them. It’s rarer than you think.
Hmm. When we were hiring, after the interview, we would put the application on hold until we recieved a reference letter or phone number to call. The best references are our current employees or friends of the boss, of course.
Are you sure they can’t provide personal references? I understand the company not wanting to be liable for libel. And obviously if you are a current employee at some company, you may not want your current boss to know you’re shopping around.
~Max
Yes. It is very possible and a good idea to not say anything about your current/prior position. Talk up the job/company you are applying for. You don’t lie- you tell them great things about them.
Interviewers will not interrogate you on your current/prior position.
They won’t.
Right, I have quite a few references on my LinkedIn profile- half are from former bosses who are no longer with that company, the other from bosses still with that company (at the time of writing). In fact, when I was being laid off from one company (a start up who was running out of funds), they apologized for not being able to give me much of a severance package, so I had them had “Positive LinkedIn and similar references will be given”.