Don’t Lie About Your Termination

If you got fired from your job, as embarrassing as it may be, DON’T LIE. It is not necessary to lie about your termination. What is more important is that you take responsibility for what happened and learn from it. Today, I got a call from a job seeker. She just got fired for the third time in 5 months.

That is a lot of firing. What is going on with this job seeker? That is the question. Why can’t she hold a job? That is a huge question and I don’t have an answer – yet. My first thought for this job seeker is to identify what the employers said to her prior to releasing her from employment. Feedback is valuable if you are being terminated. Is there a consistent message between the various employers? If so, that issue is something that you have to look at. In this case, the feedback has been consistent for this job seeker. There are real issues for her to correct if she is going to be a successful employee. Her issue is focus. For whatever reason, she struggles to remain focused on the job she is asked to do. She drifts, and has poor attention to detail and as a result, she is not able to accomplish the requirements of the job she is working.

The second thing, once you know what the issue is, you as a job seeker have to decide what you are going to do about the issues that have been presented to you. If you have a similar track record as my job seeker, than my recommendation is to decide that you need to make some adjustments. You need to change if you are going to be able to keep the next job. The problem with my job seeker is that she has gone out to apply for a new job. She has placed several resumes out there, but she omitted the last 2 jobs that she lost recently. Her fear is that if she puts all three jobs on the application, she will not get any interviews, which of course would mean that she won’t get a new job.

That may be true, but omitting the jobs from the new applications are dishonest. She called me later in the day today to ask me how she should handle the fact that she was dishonest. Her thought was she would discuss them in the interview. NOT! There is no way I would be convinced that you would share with a hiring manager that is considering you for a job, that you were terminated from your last 3 jobs. If you are not comfortable writing it on the application, you will be equally uncomfortable bringing it up in the midst of an interview that may determine whether you will be employed.

Bottom line: Don’t lie about being terminated. Give the hiring manager all of the information up front on the application and let them make an informed decision about whether they want to consider you for employment. Lying on the application and hoping they will not find out is foolish. One way or the other it will come out. Whether it is through the reference check, the employment verification or Murphy’s Law. The sad part is that if you are hired by another organization that didn’t know that you were terminated, and somehow it comes out, you can be sure you will lose that job. In the case of my job seeker that inspired this post, it would be her fourth job. If that happens, she will than find it difficult to get another job. It is not worth it.

Image Credit: sxc.hu