The Empowered Job Seeker Series, v.21 - Helping Kerri to Develop Rational, Balanced Responses to Difficult Interview Questions

During the interview preparation process of the CMS outplacement program, many candidates express their worry about how to answer the question, why did you leave your last position? – especially when it wasn’t their choice to do so!

Many are coping with their own personal understanding of what may have gone wrong in their previous roles, second guessing actions and conversations they may have had over the previous months.

Generally, there are two possible scenarios:

Scenario 1. The candidate was let go as part of a downsizing or restructuring plan. This is generally the easier of the two circumstances to explain to a new employer because most people who work within business, understand that organizations must re-organize from time to time to stay competitive.

Scenario 2. The candidate was singled out and asked to leave for some other reason – This second scenario however, can be a little trickier to respond to because there are often a lot of emotions still at play for the candidate.

When Kerri started to work with us through the interview preparation process, explaining to a potential new employer that she was terminated from her last position became a sticking point for her during his career transition.

She had worked for 15 years for a group in the education sector as a Branch Manager in Calgary.  A year before she joined our program, she was asked to change roles within the organization and relocate to the company’s head office in Toronto as part of a restructuring plan.  A role she declined due to her family’s personal commitments in Calgary – not to mention her husband’s lucrative job in the oil industry.  The year since she declined the relocation had been a stressful one for Kerri as she could feel the communication, her responsibilities, and her relationship with senior leaders at head office start to wane.  When she was ultimately told that the Branch Manager’s role in Calgary was being eliminated and her employment terminated, the emotions caused by the accumulating stress came to a boiling point.  A boiling point that seemed to linger too long for Kerri’s own good.

During her first few job interviews, when asked about the reasons for her departure from her previous employer, Kerri couldn’t help herself but to launch into a long tirade about how she was unfairly treated after 15 years of excellent service.  She appeared bitter and resentful as she had obviously not yet left her past in the past.  She was quickly eliminated from any job competition she engaged in until her CMS outplacement program coach helped her to understand how her emotions were getting the better of her when asked this common question.

Rebuilding our job seekers confidence, exploring, and addressing reasons why they may have been let go, and shifting mindsets about their future employment is an important part of the job of our Program Coaches at CMS.  Helping candidates like Kerri to develop rational and balanced responses to questions such as why did you leave your last position?, are crucial to our candidates portraying themselves as professional potential employees who are keen to move forward in their careers and contribute to a new organization in a positive way.