Your interview was going great until the interviewer asked the question you were dreading—“Why did you leave your last job?” This is never a comfortable question to answer, especially when you’ve been fired. However, by following the below tips you can minimize the potentially negative impact of being terminated and increase your chances of landing the job.
Come to terms with your emotions.
Being fired can be a very emotional situation. Before you start job hunting again, you need to make peace with the situation. If you can’t walk into your next interview with a level head and be able to speak calmly about the situation, you shouldn’t go. If you’re still upset about the situation, it’s going to show in both your body language and tone when the interviewer asks about it. No interviewer is going to hire a hot head that starts bad mouthing their previous employer.
Keep the explanation brief.
Less is always more when explaining why you were let go. If you rattle on and on about the situation, you’re more likely to over-share and say something you’ll regret. Practice addressing the situation in three to five sentences, so that you can quickly move on to positive points you want to make regarding your skills and experience. Keep in mind that the person you’re interviewing with is human. We all make mistakes, and there is a good chance that they’ve been fired from a job before as well. Be honest, succinct, and move on.
Describe what you learned.
Turn a negative situation into a positive by being prepared to explain what you learned from the experience. By being positive and explaining how you’ll approach situations different in the future, you’ll show the interviewer one of your most positive assets: you don’t dwell on your mistakes, but use them as an opportunity to learn and improve.
Ready to get back in the job market?
Let the experienced recruiters at BOS Staffing help. At BOS staffing, we go out of our way to match our candidates with jobs that really suit them. Search our available jobs or contact us today.
