Job interview questions pretty much all feel like minefields where one poorly chosen word or awkward pause blows the entire thing. Most of us know that honesty, or at least complete honesty, isn’t the best policy, but figuring out how to navigate the dynamics can feel pretty daunting.
That goes double when you’ve just been fired and the “why did you leave your last job?” question comes up. You can’t full-on lie in case they actually call your former employer, but being truthful can make you look bad. So what the heck do you do?
A worker on Reddit is in an all-too-familiar position. A veteran professional 25 years into her career, she finds herself at a major crossroads. “Over the last 1.5 years, I have worked at a company with the most toxic culture I have ever seen,” she wrote in her Reddit post, and it ended up coming for her when she did the simplest of things: gave feedback to a VP on a company process.
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“It turns out that I had insulted him. By questioning him,” she wrote, and retaliation ensued. Her manager took a project still in process and presented it as final, making the Redditor look incompetent and getting her placed on a Performance Improvement Plan, or PIP.
“I know it was total BS, but I played the game,” she wrote. Playing along didn’t work, however. She was fired shortly thereafter and told, “It’s not working out.” Thankfully, she’d already started her job search and has some leads. But she has no idea how to address what happened.
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This really is one of those conundrums where it seems you’re on the back foot no matter what you choose. “If I say it was a toxic work culture, or any version of the truth, it sounds like I’m being petty or pissy towards my last company,” she wrote. “I feel like if I lie, I’m going to be found out.”
And revealing she was “let go” makes her look like she did something to bring that on herself, which isn’t the case. “A friend of mine is a career counselor, and she called my job ‘an abusive relationship,'” she wrote. “What would you say?”
Redditors had some great ideas. “‘I decided to move on to seek out better opportunities and a work culture that was a better fit for me,'” one person suggested, which many agreed struck the perfect balance: It addresses the truth, but obliquely in a way that reveals something about who she is as a person and a professional.
Another suggested saying, “‘I was not compatible with the company’s work culture,'” adding that “usually recruiters and interviewers will get it right away.” Others also pointed out that the hiring manager’s reaction to a tactful version of the truth will be revealing of the culture at the new company and might raise important red flags.
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Redditors had good advice, but experts had much more to say about this situation, and for the most part, it is a bit counterintuitive. This job interview question is an opportunity, but only if you take accountability for being fired, whether that’s fair or not.
Anna Papalia, a former recruiter, career coach, and author of “Interviewology: The New Science of Interviewing,” said the number one thing job seekers need to know is that getting fired is NOT a dealbreaker, unless, that is, you refuse to take accountability for it, whether it was your fault or not.
“I don’t care what happened at your last job — you MUST take accountability for being fired,” she said. And then, you talk about what you learned from being fired. “Trust me, there was a lesson there,” she said, and if you can articulate it, they will see you as “not just qualified, but emotionally intelligent.”
JT O’Donnell, another veteran HR professional and career coach, has a similar take. She stressed that taking accountability doesn’t mean you have to admit guilt or wrongdoing. But like Papalia, she stressed that the only right answer to this question is to show how you grew from the experience, and more importantly, it’s an opportunity to stand out among other candidates.
“That is you showing your power to learn and grow,” she said, “and when we hear that in job interviews? Chef’s kiss.” She even likened it to “points on the board” for you against other candidates, who may not have the same depth of experience.
As with anything in the workplace, this is all a game of storytelling, and even the worst moments of our careers can be spun so long as we don’t let the negatives overshadow the positives… even if the positives are mostly made up!
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