The Career Mulligan
By OJ McGaw
As a recruiter, you’d be amazed at how many stories we hear about individuals who’ve joined the wrong company, made career-limiting decisions, or even been fired.
Don’t worry – these career mistakes happen to all of us. In times like those you might find yourself wishing you were on a golf course with a forgiving partner willing to grant you a ‘do-over’ or ‘career mulligan’. While the opportunity for a make-up shot is a rarity in the real world, you don’t have to let your past blunders ruin your career. In this piece we’ll discuss some common issues you might find yourself contending with, and examine some methods aimed at putting them behind you.
You’ve been fired
How you communicate your dismissal is vitally important in your job search. Regardless of the reasons behind your discharge, you’re bound to take it personally. The trick is to not let your anger or disappointment show in an interview. No matter how much it hurt you must refrain from pointing fingers and show the interviewer what you’ve learned from this experience.
If you can’t present the incident in an encouraging light to interviewers, than maybe you aren’t quite ready to begin your search for a new job. In order to move forward in a decisive manner and to prevent repeated mistakes, you may want to consult a trusted headhunter to discuss your situation. A recruiter will be able to assess from a neutral perspective and offer you objective advice to a greater degree than your friends or ex-colleagues. We spend our days talking to people in transition, so we’ve likely come across similar scenarios in the past and can use our knowledge to provide some valuable tips.
A final point is that it’s best to avoid the temptation to remove that particular position from your resume. Although you might lean towards that tactic to avoid having to talk about the experience, the hole in your resume and potential misrepresentation might be hard to recover from should any potential employers discover your subterfuge. Leave the job on your resume, but don’t emphasize it with five bullet points. Take a deep breath and explain to your interviewer that you are not proud of this career move, but in the interest of being open and honest in your job search, here’s what happened and, most importantly, this is what you learned.
You have a long gap in employment history
If you’ve been absent from the workplace for an extended period of time, that gap is going to raise red flags for any future employer. So how do you frame this lull to ease the minds of those who might otherwise be interested?
In general, make sure any potential flags on your resume are explained to prevent you from being overlooked for an interview. You’ll do yourself a rather large favour by including that information on resume. It’s not necessary to go into personal detail, but the last thing you want is a hiring manager imagining reasons for the space on your resume.
If your absence from the market is related to child or family care, then you should be able to easily explain your sabbatical. If you’ve been actively looking for a job for some time without any luck, then your case would be strengthened considerably if you could also point to self-improvement activities you’ve undertaken concurrently, such as continuing education or professional development classes.
You’re given a bad reference
Another potentially devastating incident that can derail your successful hunt for a job would be when one of your references tells your prospective employer something that raises that alarm bells for them. It can be hard to rebound from this, but it is possible to salvage the position. First of all, if you’ve provided three references and one of them is off, it is not likely to be the end of the world. If more than one of your references have mostly negative comments than the situation is grim.
Upon being informed that someone provided a negative reference for you, it’s a good idea to conduct some immediate damage control. Ask the firm if you can provide any others to balance the effect of the negative take.
Your next step should be to contact the reference in question and determine what it was that caused the negative assessment they provided. If it’s a legit concern, than take the time to get as clear on their perception as possible; you should then take the time to decide if this is something you need to work on. You’ll also need to allocate some time to ponder whether you’re going to use this person again in the future.
You have a series of short stints at different companies
So you find yourself a couple years into a period of transition and looking at your resume, it becomes apparent that you haven’t been able to settle anywhere for an extended period of time. How do you justify your game of career musical chairs to employers?
You need to assess your own reasons for the quick jumps and, as mentioned earlier, explain as much as possible on your resume itself. For example, if you’ve had a number of short term contracts, make it clear that you successfully completed the task you were hired for and moved on. Another tactic is to lump all those single-serving positions into one item on the resume, summarizing them in a manner that puts focus on what you accomplished and less on how long you were there.
In closing, keep in mind that it’s okay to miss a step or two during the course of your career – just make sure you learn from them and don’t repeat the same mistake twice. The way you deal with the aftermath of a faux pas will go a long way towards your graceful recovery and will also speak volumes to your future employer. And remember, always replace your divots!
- O.J. McGaw's passion for people and commitment to superior customer service makes her an excellent partner to clients' executive search and recruiting assignments. [full bio...]
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