For job seekers, getting fired at a previous job may feel like a huge black cloud when entering a job interview. Job seekers feel that it may be what comes between them and getting the job. What job seekers don’t know is that like many other negative subjects that may come up during a job interview, like an employment gap or job hopping, it can be turned around. In a job interview, you’re in control of how things on your resume are explained, and if you present them in a positive light you can avoid having a job interview gone wrong and increase your chances of landing the job.
Getting fired from a job is an unfortunate occurrence that many job seekers go through. Many job seekers feel that they’re the only ones that have been fired and that it reflects poorly on them. Sometimes job seekers aren’t solely to blame though. It could be the organization and the boss as well. You may have harbored some ill feelings towards your former boss and company, which is natural to have after losing a job, but you don’t want to vent those out in your job interview.
Before you walk into your job interview, you want to already be at peace with getting fired from your job. As CBS states, you don’t want to walk in with a lot of tension and bad feelings about it. Instead, before the job interview you should vent about it to a friend or write down all your feelings on paper. You want to get out all of the frustration and tension you’ve bottled up before the job interview.
In the interview, you don’t want to point fingers at anyone for being fired, which means that you shouldn’t blame yourself either. As much as you may feel that blaming yourself lets you take responsibility for it, it also brings up the questions as to what it was about your job performance that got you fired. You don’t want the job interviewer to question your previous job performance or skills. You just want the employer to understand what happened in the simplest of terms. Keep your explanation short in order to avoid further explanation.
Turn this negative experience into a positive. Turn the spotlight away from being fired at the job and put it on what you learned at the job. Take it as an opportunity to discuss what it is you learned from the experience and how that applies to the current job you are interviewing for. Turning the experience into a positive shows that you have moved on from it and have learned from it.
How have you dealt with being fired in a job interview? Share with us in the comments section below!
IMAGE: Courtesy of Flickr by JFXie
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