How to Explain Being Fired for Performance – Examples
When explaining why you were fired for performance, it’s important to be upfront and direct, and not try to avoid the question. You should acknowledge that you didn’t perform as well as you were expected to, and then show that you learned from the experience and give an example of how you’ve taken actions to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Should You Lie After Being Fired for Performance or Misconduct?
I don’t recommend lying in your job interviews… even if you were fired. Here’s why you might NOT want to lie:
First, hiring managers and interviewers appreciate someone being upfront and direct. If you explain the reason you were fired in the right way, they may not hold it against you! And you’ll earn their respect for telling the truth and being clear in your answer.
Next, employers often conduct background checks and/or talk to references. And while the receptionist at your last employer is very unlikely to say anything specific about why your employment was terminated (to protect the company from a lawsuit), it’s still possible that someone could say something.
And if an employer suspects that your last job was terminated for a specific reason, they’ll almost always ask to talk to your previous manager as one of your references. Your manager won’t give every detail, but they may say something to indicate you were terminated and not laid off. And if you lied, you’ll be caught!
Coming up soon, we’ll look at some good ways to explain why you were fired from your job, so make sure to keep reading until the end.
This means that you werent doing a good job in the eyes of your manager. I wont get into the fact that some companies approaches to performance reviews are brutal; things like stack ranking and bell curves and expecting a solid employee to be reviewed negatively if they arent likely to move up to the next level in a certain period of time. But lets set that aside because regardless of the fairness of the decision to let you go, you are going to have to deal with talking about it. Here are some of the ways you can explain your separation from the company, obviously picking the one that represents your situation (and is honest).
Unless you are a job-seeker living a charmed life, who wakes up with blue birds on your windowsill, youll have to answer some questions in your interview process that you would rather not. The interviewer has an interest in leaving no stone unturned, but when it comes to some topics, you would prefer that your stones be left alone. This is especially true if the story of why you left a previous employer doesnt reflect well on you.
This one can be related to the “wrong job,” if one of the resources you were promised was training. I was in that exact situation myself; I was promised training as I was transitioning from a totally different job and despite my requests, that training never happened. I got the hell out of Dodge when I realized that I was never going to get the training and mentoring I needed. I should have pushed harder. I can think of 100 things I could have done differently.
Second, you are going to have to tell the truth; some version of it. If you lie, you will have to be looking over your back hoping that your employer doesnt somehow find out, and its so frequent that they do. People talk. So, just keep in mind that crafting the right version of the truth is the goal here.
“I was dealing with a serious health issue and unfortunately it impacted my work at [company]. I wish they would have been able to offer me more support, but I understand that they needed to have a job done and I wasnt in a position to be able to do it at that time. The best thing for everyone involved was for me to focus on my health, so thats what I did. I have my health issue under control and don’t expect disruptions to my work going forward.”