So my daughter was a direct care worker at a group home. She was on the night shift, and her coworker fell asleep. Daughter waited till morning to report it and was fired for not reporting it promptly. She is now looking for a new job.
Now. If she is asked “Have you ever been fired?” she is of course going to have to answer Yes. What about when she is asked why she left her previous job? Can she say “because I am interested in finding full time employment, and that was a part time gig” (both of which are true), or does she have to bring up the firing right away?
Don’t need answer fast, but it wouldn’t hurt Thanks!
I am not a lawyer, but as a supervisor, if someone wrote on their application that they quit a job because they were looking for full time work and I later found out they were actually fired, there would be a very serious discussion about their continued employment.
If it were me, I would not bring up the firing. Employment verification policies vary widely. Sometimes (especially with small companies), you can call up the company and they will talk to you all day about the former employee. Some companies just verify that someone worked there, and indicate whether the employee is elegible for re-hire (if not, usually means they were fired). Many times, though, in order to limit liability, a company will simply verify previous employment, but give no information about the employee at all, not even whther they were fired.
Now, if your daughter finds that she is very close to getting a job or two, and the job mysteriously goes away around the time that the new company would be calling the old one, she could then infer that her previous company is, in fact, giving a detailed overview of her departure, and with that knowledge she may want to be more proactive in getting her side of the story out during the initial interview, knowing it will come up sometime.
Do you see the inconsistency in this story? I think it is rare for someone to be fired simply because they were LOOKING for another job. To get fired, one must have done something that the old employer didn’t like, justifiably or not. Sure, she CAN give these answers, but don’t bet that the interviewer would be dumb enough to let this slide (though that too is a possibility).
She should say yes and tell the whole story.
What she did was right - staying awake, reporting it - it was the when she did it that was a problem and if she can add a lesson learned of being more aware of the specifics of policies or not being afraid to alert supervisor immediately when a serious issue or whatever is appropriate then the situation shouldn’t hurt her in the eyes of the person interviewing her.
I can only speak from my own experience, but when I managed a fast food restaurant, the only things we were permitted to tell people calling for references about a previous employee were when they started and stopped working for us and what their wage/salary was at the time they left.
As an interviewer, I wouldn’t rule someone out because they didn’t follow some procedure to the letter at their previous job, especially if they were able to communicate that they had learned from their experience. But finding out they weren’t being open and honest with me would be a deal breaker.
And there’s the other side of the coin - while they are interviewing her, she is interviewing them to see if she wants to work there. Does she want to work at a company that is unable to overlook a single mistake in judgment? Some people like an environment with that kind of rigid structure; is your daughter one of those?
From my personal experience, YMMV. Typically someone calls and I give the standard reply. They then say, “come on, kayaker. Help me out here.” And I reply that the only way I’d rehire the person would involve them holding a gun to my kid’s head. And I’d need evidence the gun was loaded.
I’m not suggesting she should lie, but you need to question your assumptions. She certainly doesn’t owe a moral duty to a potential employer to tell them the truth, so the calculus should be a practical one – are potential employers going to find out? When?
She needs to have a friend call the company and ask for a reference. Ask a few leading questions and see what they say.
As for the new job interviews, I would recommend telling the truth, but put it in a way that immediately recognizes the problem and lesson learned. “A co-worker fell asleep on the job. I waited until morning to report it, when I really should have done so immediately. It was an important lesson for me.”
What kind of messed up company did your daughter work for? Jeez. Oral warning or written guidance maybe, but firing her? :dubious:
Anyway, where I live, I’m like 90% sure that it’s actually illegal for a company to give out that information [she was fired]. So if it were me, I wouldn’t tell them. And if they asked me point blank if I’ve ever been fired, I’d tell them “Nope”.
If you are not asked directly, I’d say something along the lines of “it wasn’t a good fit.”
If you are pressed further, tell the story honestly, with an emphasis on what you have learned. Something along the lines of "I will be straightforward with you. I was asked to resign after a violation of policy. I was working over the night shift, and a coworker fell asleep on the clock. I made a judgement call and waited until morning, when I would have time to fully document the incident without disrupting service, to report it. Unfortunately, this was determined to be against policy. I feel terrible about the incident, as I feel strongly about giving my best to my work. But I have come away with a stronger appreciation for the importance of having clear and consistent policies. I would like to invite you to speak to my former supervisor, who speak to the quality of my work.
As a hiring supervisor, this disclosure would be an immediate red flag to me, even more so than performance issues.
I would be far more understanding of: “Yes, I was terminated from my last position. I unintentionally violated a workplace policy by not reporting a colleague for sleeping during the night shift. It was a mistake, and I have since learned that it is my responsibility to familiarize myself with rules and responsibilities right away.”
Was the person sleeping also fired? This doesn’t help answer the question, unless that person was not fired. Then there may be something else going on.
This is great. It’s both honest and shows a genuine attempt at doing her job the best way she knew how. There are places that will agree with her that customer/client service gets higher priority, and even those who don’t, if they’re sane, will understand why SHE felt that way.
If they’re not sane, she doesn’t want to work for them. So, win-win.
As for personality conflicts, there are some places where EVERYONE has them with the boss, and other employers, especially those in the same field, know who and where they are. I do agree that it’s not a good idea to say something like that unless big-time prompted.
Things can be widely variable, however. The incident I’m about to describe happened in the 1970s, and I worked with this woman about 10 years later. Right after she graduated from high school, she got a job at a bank, and long story made short was fired because she wouldn’t go to bed with the loan officers. :eek: When she applied and interviewed for the job at the place where I worked with her, the first question she was asked was, “Why were you fired from XYZ bank?” and she told the truth. The MALE interviewer set his pen down, leaned back, and told her, “I’m offering you the job, and I want you to take it.” And she did.
Many health care positions have a bunch of “one strike and you’re out” rules for liability reasons.
Illegal, as in a criminal offense? That’s been done to death on the boards. There’s no state or federal law preventing an employer from telling anyone almost anything about your employment with them. There may be union agreements, and confidentiality agreements, and contracts, and even in their absence most companies these days have policies about releasing information in order to avoid a civil lawsuit. But if you can find a case of an employer in the USA facing criminal charges for revealing that a former employee was fired, I’ll eat my hat.
Thanks!