I was sitting at a seminar when someone in the audience asked a very experienced, very respected HR professional what to tell a potential employer that he was fired. And the HR specialist replied that you are not obliged to tell people that you were fired, this is your choice.
But this could work earlier when the working circles and networks of professionals were smaller. Today, information (and gossip) is spreading much faster and much wider.
My father did not advise me to do this when I was fired from work. His following recommendations taught me how to talk about my dismissal.
Think over the dismissal story
The error is not limited to an attempt to hide the unfortunate facts of a career path. Even worse, when you do not have your “honest story”, when you are asked why you were fired: what happened, what it taught you, what you will do differently next time, and what you will do again.
“Sincerity plays an important role here, in my experience,” my father said. “And the demonstration that through the experience of firing you became more mature is even more important.” Because it, in a good or bad sense, will become part of your "personal brand" - one of those things that people talk about when you leave the room, and it is important for you to shape what they will talk about.
I well remember the example my father cited as it’s not worth talking about dismissal at an interview. Father’s girlfriend was fired from work because of a bad relationship with the leadership, and when she came to the interview, she talked for a long time about everything connected with her boss, about all the things that he had done wrong, how he had not fulfilled his obligations and how her relationship with her parents could be the reason why she had a bad boss. And then it is impossible to understand what the dismissal gave her: nothing about what she learned, what next time she will do differently, how much she grew up as a professional.
What taught my father's dismissal
Learn from firing. This advice is based on the experience of my father, who twice went through dismissal. And both times he was fired as publicly as possible.
First dismissal: when he led the department at an investment company, his team erroneously positioned certain investment products as low-risk products for customers, but they were actually too risky. The company's customers had to lose a little money in the event of a fall, but they lost a lot. My father advocated partial compensation for losses to customers. But his leader was not in agreement.
The debate eventually came to a board that sided with my father. But - not surprisingly - his relationship with the leader was badly damaged, and he was quickly kicked out of the company. Father said that he had learned an important lesson: that the slogan “Client is most important”, which is on the list of values of any company, is of great importance for him. Even “losing the job you love” turned out to be less significant.
Second Lesson Learned from Dismissal
The second dismissal: he was cut from the post of managing unit of a large company. The business results of the unit were high (and above the plan). Therefore, after he was sent home, he asked some board members what he could do better (besides excellent business results). Their answer was that in this room he did not have a lawyer or another person who would fight for him.He was so immersed in the business that he did not develop relationships in the company. An important lesson.
The mistakes we make when we get laid off
Thus, the number one mistake you can make when you are fired is to think that you can hide this fact, or to think that you can avoid it the next time, or not to fully think about what you learned or not Be prepared to discuss this with other people in a constructive, factual, emotionless conversation.
Another mistake is not to have an "emergency fund" in case of dismissal - this is the amount of the size of your wages for three to six months, which is in a safe bank account to put yourself in order. The presence of this financial pillow gives you the opportunity to not rush to get the next job and allows you to take a breath to realize what happened before you were kicked out of work.
