THE BEECHMONT CREST CAREER GUIDE:
SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN THE CORPORATE JUNGLE
CHAPTER 4: INTERVIEWING AND CLOSING THE DEAL
The old maxim is true: you should never say anything negative about your current or past employers
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
-Oscar Wilde
One of the time-honored rules of interviewing is that you should never delve into conflicts with former bosses, gripes about your current job, or similar topics that convey negative sentiments about past or present employers.
Many people have problems with this one. The notion that they have to completely clamp down on all their past grievances seems a bit unfair. After all, there are two sides to every story. A past boss may have had a purely personal disliking for you. Nonetheless, his opinions had a decisive influence on your performance reviews, your aspirations for promotion, and your compensation. Why must his power be projected into the future as well, in the form of a gag order that prevents you from telling your side of the story?
I used to take the above position. However, I acquired a better understanding of this issue once I actually had a chance to see the situation from the opposite perspective, as an interviewer for a large corporation. I interviewed a number of candidates who launched into an account of how unfairly they had been treated by an employer or a supervisor. I have no doubt that some of them were telling the truth. But the truth or untruth of these lengthy jeremiads did not help their cause. The candidates who told negative stories about past and current employers were inevitably tainted by the negativity of their tales. When does a complainer ever come across as upbeat or positively oriented?
Moreover, I simply wasn’t interested in hearing about how unfairly they had been treated at another job. All I wanted to know in the interview situation was how they could perform in the positions for which I was interviewing them. As I advised in a previous chapter of this book, you must maintain a constant vigilance to make sure that your message to employers remains relevant and conveys a favorable impression of you.
Everyone has a story. Everyone can give an account of being passed over for promotion they felt they deserved, treated badly by a tyrannical boss, or unfairly dismissed. However, a full accounting of these grievances will not serve your purpose in an interview. All the person on the other side of the table will see is a candidate with a negative attitude.
Remember that the interview process is about selling yourself, not vindicating your past actions. You should therefore focus on presenting a positive message during your interview--no matter how unfair, unenlightened, or downright nasty your previous employers might have been.
Copyright 2006 Beechmont Crest Publishing