So I was essentially fired from my last job. It was because of performance, not any questionable behavior or personality conflicts. I’m now looking for a new job and I’m not sure how to explain this so that I don’t look like an idiot.
So here’s some more detail. I am a software developer. I started working for an insurance company to support their quoting system. The system is rather complex and has many tiers that are maintained by different groups. I was brought in because one guy was leaving the company and the other guy Phil was overloaded with work. These two people consisted of the group that maintained a particular tier in the system. Phil was the guy that I needed to learn the most from, he was the guru who had worked on the system for several years. The problem was that Phil worked out of his house 2000 miles away. He would connect by VPN and he tried to train me via email, IM and phone calls. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear from him for a day or two after asking a question.
After working there a few weeks, I was starting to make some progress putting it all together. The feedback that I received from my supervisor was positive. Then I was notified by the company that I was contracting through that I was being let go. The reason was that I wasn’t learning fast enough and not taking much of the load off of Phil. My entire time working there was 10 weeks.
So I’m trying to find a way to explain this as I’m interviewing for other jobs. Any advice?
“The person training me lived 2000 miles away and was trying to train me via email, h…”
Just tell them what you said here, it seems perfectly understandable.
Although, if you can sum it up in a couple of sentences, that would probably be a good thing.
I was fired for not learning the system fast enough and taking enough burden off the experienced guru who was training me. However, the guru lived 2000 miles away and was not always accessible when I needed help.
All my jobs have ended because of “end of contract,” except for the RA job that ended due to “graduation” and one due to “end of project.”
That job was a 10wk contract. Given that you live in a country where many people don’t even get a written contract, it’s not like someone can root in SS’s files and come up saying “aha! The copy of the contract said ‘unlimited’!” (in Spain contracts for most jobs have to be in writing and a copy filed with Social Security).
I also don’t think you were fired. It sounds like they thought they could train someone under these circumstances, and then realized they were wrong. If you need to give a reason, then I think a better way to say it is that resources were not available to train you on their internal system.
I tell prospective employers that I was fired because I agreed to goals that were beyond my abilities and failed to meet those goals, and that it was a valuable lesson about knowing my limits.
I reread the OP, in particular comments on Phil the Guru. I was only in dev for a few years, but I definately have come across the guru type many times. There are the gurus who just want everyone to know how the system works so that it can live a long, robust life and who also just enjoy helping people and who don’t like seeing their coworkers frustrated. And there are also the gurus who are territorial and are convinced that any newbie is just going to f**k up their carefully-crafted code. By chance, was Phil closer to the second group?
I interview a dozen people a month. It’s pretty obvious to me, unless you completely lie about it, whether you are currently at your present job. The more you hide it, the sketchier it looks.
Just say “I lost my position due to some restructuring”. I don’t know that you got fired for masterbating at your desk. I just assume like many companies, you had some layoffs. Just because you weren’t a good fit there doesn’t mean you might not be a fit here.
Every employer is different though. I tend to respect honesty while others might be petty and short sighted, thinking “well, if they don’t want him, neither do we”.
I don’t understand this. If you do so much interviewing surely you understand the difference between Employees and Contractors. The OP is a Contractor whose Contract was up. That is all the explanation needed, or wanted, or should be given. OP you were not fired. Contractors can almost never be fired.