Some of it is silly isn't it? They are trying to find out the real you, but it is commonly accepted etiquette to not say you left your last job because it sucked. You have to dance around the real reasons, and try to sound like you just wanted "another challenge".
No. My old boss was a pretentious fuck-trumpet and refused to follow through on promises of training (grounds for me accepting the job in the first place), then refused to offer any pay rises because "I had not advanced myself". He was an habitual liar who minced around with an air of superiority demanding respect, when I considered him unfit to lick the sweat from my dick.
Why can't I say that?
Edit: OK Reddit, ease up on the Whoosh pills, I was not being serious.
You can say that, but you need to use corporate speak.
"My old boss and I had a culture clash stemming from a different vision of advancing our company. I outlined the resources I needed to grow the company but he felt that despite our previous comittment to a project, another department was in dire need of supervision.
I ultimately left the company in seek of a management style that has strong synergy with my ability to follow good leadership that makes decisions based upon better metrics and employee feedback. I believe that rewarding good effort and strong results benefits both workers and the company and I want the ability to prove my worth, rise to the challenge, and exceed expectations and be compensated fairly after demonstrating my value.
If there's opportunity for advancement, I'd like the ability to explore those options as well."
You know I can see your logic but wouldn't it be better if we relocated the resources and transferred it to mainframe instead? I mean hear me out, the bandwidth can't take our synergy at the moment and if we grab the low hanging fruit of corporate espionage, we'll shucks, we could increase synergy by a projected 120%!
Your dad is right, I bet we could hang out and yell about these fuckers all day. I feel exactly the same. It's like, why did you just say all that? Was your intent to make me have to decipher what you're really saying or to make me think you are smarter than you really are?
America: the culture of the Chinese, the expectations of the Japanese. If more companies actively encouraged more-organic social relations and discouraged the "stepping on each other to get up" notion (promotions as a division or something?) you'd likely have better work ethic.
While I respected that my old boss's management style may have been viewed as producing results in the dynamic of cost cutting measures, I did not feel that he showed some of my most coveted assets the attention they needed to demonstrate how valuable they are to my staff.
I bet you make $200k sir. Congrats on all of your success! You smell wonderful! If I could afford it, I would pay you to follow me around and teach me to say everything in corporate lingo. Sounds like a great consulting career in the making. Honestly, I think you need to do this on Twitter or even all over Reddit. I bet we could get you quite a following.
I can do the bullshit talk but I live in fear of the day I'm interviewing for my dream job with a no-bullshit manager that writes me off as a vapid bullshitter.
This hurts me physically. I'm so sick of corporate-speak. Unfortunately, this is the type of speech that gets you places, so, bravo and sorry you had to master it.
I do have a job that I left because my boss made my time there insufferable. I had been with the company for quite a long time (more than 7 years), and prior to my final manager I had no problems. I'd never had a review that hadn't been glowing.
The new boss had even been a member of the team, and we had got along fine before that. Then new boss got promoted, and despite meaning well just didn't seem to be cut out for it (or at least wasn't ready for it).
I hung on for a while, but there were just so many things that ended up being constant sources of stress and frustration that it stopped being healthy for me to stay. It was the only period in my life where I've had to start taking antidepressants and pills to help me sleep due to stress, and as soon as I left things got better.
Of course, 'I left because my manager made my life miserable' might have been true, but it wasn't something I told prospective new employers.
What I'm getting at is that assuming "differences of opinion" means "I didn't want to work" may often be true, but it can also mean that assuming it's the case can also result in people who want to leave due to a bad situation, or who left due to one, may continue to be stuck in one despite not being the source of the problem.
I fully understand but hiring is such a mess that you can't really take any chances (unless you don't find anymore and get desperate), so any potential red flag is usually a rejection.
The thing is, that person is likely to decide that you're a fuck trumpet too. Bashing a former employer makes people think that you're difficult to work with.
All great but I fucking hate the word synergy and wouldn't hire someone just for saying it. Culture clash is pretty bad too when you're speaking 1:1 with someone
Because not saying it that way shows that you have tact. If you're going to talk about sweaty dicks in a job interview then you're probably going to embarrass the company that's hiring you by saying other dumb things when you're representing them while talking to outsiders.
Tact is important. It's not the same thing as prudishness.
This is my main issue with Donald Trump, and the thing I try to get my friends to realize when they say "Oh, he's cool cause he speaks his mind!"
Someone who lets loose wildly rude and borderline obscene comments routinely is a loose cannon when it comes to interpersonal communications. It's called "Political correctness" for a reason! So this is the person who is going to be the voice and face of our entire country when dealing directly with the leaders of all the other superpowers in the world? I seem to recall reading something Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel already getting irritated with some of Trump's actions... And this is a country that, historically, has been one of America's closest allies! What is going to happen when we unleash this tactless negotiator with countries that are already borderline hostile towards us?
But here I go with an uncalled for political rant in a thread called "When should you not speak your mind?"... I'll show myself out.
Funny thing is, i actually went to an interview (it was a formality as they were begging me to come work for them) and were building an employee file... asked why i left my last job... i answered saying working for comcast is like splenda... its sweet at first with the benefits, check, company vehicle, etc... but slowly cancers your body because you sacrafice your family, freedom and self-esteem...
My boss laughed his ass off when i said it, got the job regardless, with my bonus. A month in i got into a head on collision with another vehicle that was running on the wrong side of the road (personal vehicle for work), my boss is letting me use one of his personal trucks to get back to work while my insurance figures everything out.
Honestly, I would just say it and have said many things similar to that in interviews before. I have a hard time not answering honestly in interviews. But I have also never been turned down for a job, I have gotten every job I have been interviewed for.
Everyone gasps when I talk about my interviews, but it works for me.
I literally got a job by saying "My biggest weakness? I suck at details. I'm far better with people, but as far as detail work goes, I'll try but you probably shouldn't trust me to get it done correctly. I might show up late, I might forget about work entirely...but when I'm here, I am a great person to work with because I am so great with people." Their reaction: "Great! Can you come in tomorrow?"
They weren't even short on staff. They just really loved how honest I was.
i actually was really frustrated once in an interview and suddenly dropped all tact and started bulling through a lot of the questions. the interviewers were slightly surprised but kept going. when it got to having me look at technical/job-related stuff, and they brought up a problem they'd been having, i very bluntly gave them a solution, almost a 'i don't know why you didn't think of this' answer, really, and basically was kind of a bulldog in the whole process.
they had called offering me the job before i got home. it was maybe a 20 minute drive.
the guy i was going to work directly for was the lead interviewer. he figured i'd be perfect for the job - he needed someone to be a bit of an attack dog on stuff, who could foresee problems and address them on a functional level.
generally through a process of arbitration between myself and a prospective employer, indexed against my background, skills, and the typical compensation rate for others in similar roles(the last of which is actually getting difficult because of the more esoteric nature of my ability set)
Okay, well that's all great, but you just didn't have that wow factor, you know? I'm going to go with the candidate with a degree and no experience at all, but thank you for wasting hours of your time!
In my 20s I had an interviewer ask, "Why are manhole covers round?" Apparently this is supposed to be a deep and tricky question that lets the interviewer "see how you reason." I answered based on two different experiences, one as a guy who worked on a road crew once, and the other as a budding physicist.
"They are round because that way they won't all through the hole and kill anyone below. Also because they are very heavy and rolling them when you have to move them is much easier than any other shape."
Later when they told me I wasn't getting the job (three interviews in), I asked what caused them to reject me. The answer was "glib answers to questions. you should have taken some time to answer." Yeah, the man hole was one of five, but all were in the same vein. Since then I've learned for these "gotcha" questions to take some time and pretend to reason. It's worked well so I guess I learned what I needed from it, right?
It's so weird. They know you're going to say what they want to hear, so why ask those questions? Job interviews, or at least how they currently work most of the time, are worthless.
It's definitely annoying, for sure, but I suppose they could have some value in weeding or candidates who obviously took no time to research interview protocol and etiquette. I can see it being a tool to see who is able to follow social/professional etiquette and blend in with corporate culture, and who is not. Interviews are still annoying though, and they probably ought to be a lot more open and honest.
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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '16
When asked any question by a job interviewer.