You Were Fired . . . Now How Do You Get Hired?

Maybe you are one of the fortunate ones and there are no details on your resume that require a little explaining. But, if you have spent long enough in the professional world, chances are that you have left at least one position under less than ideal circumstances. It could be because your job performance was not up to par or it was determined that your skill set did not match the position for which you had been hired. Or, maybe your work was just fine but the company needed to make some structural changes to personnel. Whatever the case may be, you will find yourself in a job interview having to share the reasons your boss told you that your presence in the office was no longer needed.

How do you admit to being fired while also convincing a potential employer that he or she should hire you? Dawn Rasmussen offers some great advice regarding this uncomfortable circumstance in an article for the Careerealism blog. In the piece, she suggests balancing out the potentially negative mark by noting volunteer work or professional development done in your field. Also, make sure that you look and sound professional in your interview. If you have a sloppy and unprepared presentation, you being fired will not seem so farfetched. And, just be honest. If there was a definable reason for which you were let go, be upfront about that shortcoming and what you have done since to correct it.

I encourage you to read these suggestions and several others in Rasmussen’s piece. Even if you haven’t had to overcome your own firing, perhaps it will provide a different perspective on that potential employee who is trying to explain his checkered job history from the other side of your desk.

Have you been fired from a job? How did you handle that issue when the time came to meet with your next potential employer?

About the author

Joe Lavelle

Joe Lavelle is the Co-Founder of intrepidNow. Prior to that Joe was an accomplished healthcare IT executive and career coach with a record of successfully meeting the business and technology challenges of diverse organizations including health plans, health delivery networks, health care companies, and several Fortune 500 companies.

Joe is also the author of Act As If It Were Impossible To Fail, available on Amazon.

   

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