This is one of the most dreaded interview questions, and for good reason. Unless the answer is, “I was laid off,” it’s a minefield. But that doesn’t mean there’s no good way to answer.

The key to successfully answering this question lies in understanding what it is that the interviewer is trying to uncover. A potential employer is not only trying to discover your strengths, but also any red flags about traits that might make you a “problem employee.”

So first, don’t bash your previous employer. No matter how much your previous employer might deserve it, taking that approach is just going to make you sound like a whiner and make the interviewer wonder what you’ll be saying about his company when you leave it.

Second, don’t complain about your workload, even if it was unreasonable. See above warning against sounding like a whiner.

Basically, understand that an interviewer is going to view your answer from the boss’s perspective- if you didn’t like your workload at your last job, maybe you just aren’t a hard worker. If you hate your boss, maybe you’re just hard to work with.

Instead, think about how to frame your reasons for leaving in terms that a new employer can sympathize with. Instead of talking about the excessive workload, consider the conditions that make it that way. Talk about how you weren’t empowered in that position to make the decisions that would have made the department run more efficiently.

It’s perfectly reasonable to explain why your last job wasn’t a good fit- it gives the new potential employer a good picture of your work style and preferences. But it’s important to do so in such a way that doesn’t give an unfairly poor impression of you to the interviewer.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 31st, 2005 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.