”Why Did You Leave Your Last Company?” The Reason for Leaving Your Job - 10 BEST Answers

Why did you leave your last job? Or why do you want to leave your job? Oh my gosh, this is such an important question. This video contains so many different examples for every different situation that you might be in. I bet yours is definitely covered and if it's not, write your situation in the comments. I do recommend watching the whole video because you are going to get over 10 different example answers that you can use and take bits and pieces to craft the ultimate perfect answer. Because if you're actively interviewing with companies, you've been asked this question, right? And employers trust turn into frogs with this question because they are constantly jumping to conclusions. They're thinking about why did they leave their job without another one lined up? Why have they been at their past companies for such a short amount of time? Why are they on the job market? Okay, calm down Kermit. Here's how to answer this question flawlessly to calm the mind of the interviewer and get them to ask no more follow up questions. That's the key. That's one of my claims to fame when I help people with this question. Because if you are having to explain at length why you left a company that is taking away from the interview time when you could actually be impressing them, well, I want to say welcome back to the channel and if you're new here, hello, I'm Madeline Mann. I'm a human resources leader and job search strategist who turns job seekers into job shoppers. You may recognize me as a top job search instructor on Spotify and LinkedIn Learning, or you may have seen me on Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and more. Be sure you are subscribed to to elevate your career and stay to the end because I'm going to give you the most popular script. That's right. I have tons of scripts, but this one time and time again is the one that the most viewers use and I've gotten incredible feedback on it. There are three key rules of thumb that you need to keep in mind when you're answering the question. Why are you leaving your job? Why did you leave your last job? The first one is make sure your answer is short. I'm talking one to three sentences. A grave mistake. People do do is they give too much description and detail. This question is a quick check the box question. They're just trying to understand did something go wrong in your past role? Is there something about your past role that you didn't like that's actually the same here. So you're just going to come here and then leave us. They're trying to check for a few skeletons of closet, quick peek, then they're closing the door. Number two, keep your answer positive. And I see a lot of job seekers find this very challenging, especially if your last role was over. Oh so toxic. But what's going to be going through interviewer's head is if you say anything bad about your previous boss or company, they're going to think this person's going to speak this way about us. And we also don't want this employer to dwell on your past drama, and instead we want them to focus more on your future. Number three, you have to be confident. We often forget that we write our own narratives. You get to tell this story however you want to, and the employer will only see it as a sob story or a difficult situation if that's how you make it out to be. So answer quickly, confidently, and make like a cow and move on. Another interview question that is always asked, and we must be brief when we're answering it, is tell me about yourself. Oh my gosh, I kind of hate this question, but I did create a worksheet because this is so crucial. It has the exact parts and examples for you to answer this question really effectively. And we've gotten thousands of emails saying it's super helpful. So I'll link that free resource below. All right, now let's walk through a bunch of different scenarios and have example answers for each that follow these criteria that I just set. So let's say you were laid off. Say something very brief. I mean, this wasn't your fault. So bonus points if you reference how big the layoff was, if it was sizable. So you could say something like, the company went through some tough financial times and laid off 40% of the workforce. Unfortunately, I would have loved to stay there. It was a great place to work. Okay, now let's walk through some responses. If your reason for leaving your last job wasn't really related to that job or possibly even your career at large. So let's say you left for family reasons. You could say something like, I took some time off to take care of a family member. Now I'm eager to get back to work. If you had to relocate, you could say something like, I recently moved to this area because my spouse is getting their master's degree at the University of Alabama and I'm looking for a new job in the city. Or if you were pursuing education, you could say, I took time to get my MBA and now I'm excited to apply. What I've learned to my next role. I've actually had quite a few clients who are entrepreneurs who I help then transition back into the workforce, which is very challenging but absolutely doable with job shopping strategies. So here's what you want to do if you're in that situation to make it 100% clear that you are moving on from your entrepreneurial endeavors such as I took time to do my own freelance consulting, which was a great learning experience. But I greatly miss being on a team and I'm eager to get back into a company. Next, let's talk about how you're going to explain if you were fired. Now, I was fired once in my career and I will link the story of that down below if you want to see it. But also I worked in HR where part of my job description was terminating employees. And I will tell you, I had to terminate a lot of incredible people not because they were terrible employees, but just because they were in the wrong role in the wrong company. And so know that you are going to move past this. You are going to be so successful at your next role. And so I want you to really own this next step and not let it get you down. That being said, I need you to know that you should avoid saying that you were fired by any means necessary. A good way to frame it is to agree with the termination, such as the company hired me for one role, but then it changed to be outside of my skill set and that led to an amicable split, which is why I'm so excited about this role at your company because it focuses on my strength areas of X, Y and Z. Now let's say you're still at your job or you left your job voluntarily. I want you to keep in mind the rules we set at the top of this video. Okay? So you may not want to give your real reason, instead give of a more secondary reason or a bit of a watered down story. We'll call it the Disney version instead of the gritty documentary version. So if the real reason you're leaving your job is because the workplace is toxic or your boss is a loon, your co workers are mean, leadership is completely out of touch with reality. We are going to leave that fodder for your memoir and instead focus on a bit more of a secondary reason. What could that be? Well, first you could blame it on the company's financial situation. My current company is going through some tough financial times, so I'm looking for something more stable and secure in a company that has a really strong future. It's also really easy to blame it on the commute. I enjoy the work, but the commute is long and it's taking a toll on me and my family. I'm looking for a position closer to home to reduce my commuting time. You could blame it on a recent merger. The company underwent significant changes due to a merger, changed my team and role significantly, and shifted away from my career goals. Or talk about how you want to change industries to something more exciting, such as I have a deep passion for artificial intelligence and it's my dream to work in that industry. Or the absolute banger of an answer that so many people have said works really well for them. I hit the ceiling of growth in my role and when I explored new opportunities within the company, I found that they were limited. That's why I'm excited about this role. I want to learn new skills and gain uni experiences such as X. Now I want to be clear when I say give a secondary reason or don't talk smack about the company. Still, whatever you say should be true. It shouldn't be completely made up. I'm more saying that let's take the negative reasons out. We don't want to say bad things about the employer and focus on things that are a bit more neutral. To make sure you are acing your interviews, I'm going to leave two powerful resources for you for free down below. The first is a job shopping workshop to get companies to start selling you on opportunities in the interview and the second is a list of 15 questions that you can ask in the job interview to appear very impressive. So I will link that all below and do let us know which of these scripts are you going to use or are you going to make your own? Leave that in the comments. Make sure you like this video and subscribe to this channel. You've got this wi fi high five.