Interviewing after Losing Job

[snow leopard27]

My wife teaches at a private school and, due to mainly personality conflicts, her supervisor did not offer a contract for next school year (they work on year to year contracts).

We are looking for good suggestions about responding to questions about why you left your last job. Has anyone been fired and had to do this? She has several good recommendation letters, including one from the supervisor he did not want her back.

Thank !

 

[JohnnyYuma]

I thought most schools gave you the option of resigning so you wouldn't have a "firing" on your record. That would give her the option of saying she left for whatever reason she chose.

 

[texaszete]

Just be honest and say that she didn't fit. A lot of people have worked jobs where they were just different from their peers, and it's not really a negative thing. Just don't make something up because there is a possibility they will check with the previous employer.

 

[Tailgate]

Honesty=best policy. "It was not a great fit for me." "I had different ideas on the direction to take things."

 

[snow leopard27]

Thanks guys; she has chosen to be up front with it in the interviews she has had so far. Everybody seems to know everybody in the private school world, so I think it was the right decision.

 

[THEYESOFTXS]

My current legal assistant interviewed with us a couple months after getting canned form her previous job...

We asked her what happened and kind of expected some B.S. story.

She said, "I accepted a position as a clerk and was shortly thereafter promoted to legal secretary. I could not pass up the opportuntiy, but as it turned out my employer thought I was more qualified than in fact I was. I was undertrained and overwhelmed and I made some mistakes at my job that lead to my firing. I know now I should have asked to be demoted are more aggressively sought out the training I needed. but I didn't. MY mistakes were serious enoughy to get me fired... and it was no one's fault but mine."

We hired her... two years later she is still our best employee.