Handling The Question - “Have You Ever Been Fired?”

Still struggling to frame a proper explanation for your termination? Here’s how to clear the air while taking the hiring manager by your side.
Have you ever been fired? If yes, be prepared to confront curiosity in future job interviews. Of course, it is never a comfortable issue to explain and there's always the risk that the interviewer is judging your competency based on your answer.
The key to getting past the question is to frame it up in terms of what you've learned—not what happened. The best strategy to explaining your point in an interview is to prepare yourself, acknowledge the situation, and move on. Here’s where to start:


1) No need to bring out the skeletons out of the closet unless necessary. Let the hiring manager take up the issue, otherwise you don’t need to expose information related to your work history. That’s almost like opening a first date with, “My last breakup was heinous!” A big no-no.

2) Try to process your thought, have a clear understanding of the things that you are going to talk about in front of the interview panel. In order to talk about what happened, take time to examine the details of what occurred. Jot down the reasons or the root cause of the situation, introspectively acknowledging your part in the event. Perhaps the firing really was unfair, but to answer this question in an interview well, you need to take the time to process the events so that it doesn’t frazzle you when the question is asked.

3) Now comes the time when you need to put up potent reason behind the termination. Were you fired for something really serious, like failing to achieve targets or job responsibilities or something graver? Explain why you messed up and what you learned from your mistakes. Avoid making excuses and try not to being defensive in case of counter questions from the hiring manager. Put the facts out there as subtly as possible and then give examples of what you’ve done or will do that proves that you now understand the importance of job performance. In case you were laid off- the story is going to be different all together and you should be aware of the situation.

4) Avoid saying things that could disqualify you from the job. Evade mentioning the word "fired"- that way you can at least avoid some of the stigma surrounding being fired if you don't come right out and say it. Instead, use terms like "the job wasn't the best fit", "let go" and even "termination" sound better than fired.

5) Show them that you have taken lesson from the termination and grown as a professional since then. Take the interview panel in confidence explaining that the termination was for a cause. You have taken it as a learning experience, taking time to reassess your strengths and weaknesses to move to different job direction or to devise a plan to work on problem areas in order to stay abreast in your current field.

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