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How do you explain your reason for termination in your next job interview?

Be smart about how you explain your reasons for leaving a job, raise your hand if you have been on Truth Social and a good attitude and willingness to work beats any college degree

Author

The Deputy
April 25, 2024

“I can only control my own performance. If I do my best then I can feel good at the end of the day.”

Michael Phelps

Tom swore off soda, declaring war on sugar. He switched to black coffee—his new morning ritual. On Day One, he mistook the salt for sugar, creating a brew so vile it could wake the dead. By Day Three, he could decode Morse code with his eyelids from the caffeine jitters. A week in, and Tom felt invincible—except at bedtime. Now, he’s an accidental night owl, but hey, who needs sleep when you've conquered sugar?

PS - stop drinking caffeine after 4PM.

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In today’s email:

  • Job News: You were fired for performance. How do you explain that? 🔥

  • Overheard at coffee: The Truth about Truth Social?... 💁🏼‍♂️

  • Trending AI Tools: Meet Sonnetai. It’s a meeting note taker and can act as your CRM 😅

  • Hot Jobs: (keep scrolling down ⬇️)

  • Recruiting Fails: Ivy League degree, State College degree or no degree - you still have to work ❌

Job News

After days of looking for a top candidate for a senior engineer position we found our one. The problem is the candidate was terminated from his last job for performance reasons. While we are thankful for his transparency AND he had all the skills and qualifications needed for the job, we were uneasy about submitting him.

This made me wonder how many candidates share the real reasons they leave their companies. I believe in second chances but knowing someone’s job history before you hire them is priority #1. When you come across the top candidate for the job and they meet all the criteria, double click on their reasons for leaving a job.

If they didn’t see eye to eye with their last boss, that’s okay but find out what they have learned from that experience. If they are still bitter about the departure there is a good chance they haven’t learned anything. Call their last boss if needed.

Pretend you are working with that candidate 100 days later and you experience everything you wondered about why they were let go from their job. Will you regret making the hiring decision? Having hiring regrets is a painful feeling…

If you are reading this, you might be the candidate trying to figure out what to say about your reasons for leaving your last job or maybe it was a job from years past. Say less, which often speaks more. You can say “mass layoff” and if this is true, most people will understand it. 

If you were terminated for performance you can say the job was difficult and not for you or it didn’t align with your career interests. Let future employers know you decided to take a break to work on your skills so you can offer more to a future employer OR maybe you can use the termination to spark a career change. The key is to learn from your mistakes and work on growing. 

In a different light, there are many people employed but not happy in their current job. I just spoke with a Professional Services Executive on Monday who told me she is not happy where she is and is looking for a better boss and work culture. She is not alone…

Gallup recently did their annual survey which found that in 2023 only 31% of people are actually engaged at work and 20% are disengaged and looking for a better job. Think about that for a moment. If you go to lunch with 10 people from work, only 3 of them are engaged in what they are doing, 2 of them are looking for a better job and the other 5 are just coasting. 

If you are not engaged in your job, you are headed down the wrong path. You can work on fixing it or you can work on finding a new job. Not being engaged means you will not do your best work and increase your chances of being terminated for performance reasons. 

You have more control over your work than you think.

PS - we didn’t submit the candidate who terminated for performance. Our consensus was he was too bitter and we thought this attitude would carry into his new job.

Overheard at coffee ☕️

 Did you hear the Truth about Truth Social?...

We have too many social media apps already but in case you don’t know what Truth Social is, it’s Donald Trump’s social network that he started in February of 2022. 

Nothing to see here. Just a social media app that is struggling with financial and regulatory issues. While I haven’t used Truth Social or knowingly met someone who has, here are the numbers.

They have 2M active monthly users vs. 450M monthly active users like Twitter/X. Truth Social reported only $3.38M in revenue and a $49M loss for the first nine months of 2023. They are losing money fast.

The Truth is everything about this company sounds like a scam.

🚀 Meet Sonnetai. It’s a meeting note taker and can act as your CRM. If you are not using AI to help you take notes, you are making your job harder than it needs to be.

🔥 Hot Jobs - $1K Referral Fee

Recruiting Fails: A couple of years ago a hiring manager (VP of Finance) for a hot tech company asked us to only find candidates from Ivy League schools. He needed someone to match his Harvard and Yale degrees.

He overlooked anyone’s work experiences, attitude or other attributes for an Ivy League school degree. We know because we would submit qualified candidates but if they didn’t have an Ivy League degree, he would decline them.

There were many great candidates we passed on because they didn’t have Yale, Harvard, Princeton, etc listed on their resume. We ended up finding his Ive Leaguer candidate and they were hired. 

The person hired was “asked” to leave the company after 6 months and the feedback was that the person failed to do the basic requirements of the job. Instead they would find projects to work on that were only interesting to them, but not anyone else.

Ivy league degree, state college or no degree, you must do the basics before you can do the cool or interesting projects. College degrees are great but they don’t guarantee success in the job.

Do you have recruiting Fail Stories? Reply with your epic fails – we'll feature them. Own your blunders, embrace vulnerability, and let's all level up together.

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