It’s beyond infuriating that as a job-seeker, qualified and ready to work, you have to worry about answering the question “Why aren’t you working right now?” as though being unemployed were a crime. You can even start to feel vaguely guilty as you sit in the interview chair, although you haven’t done anything wrong!
Why are some interviewers so suspicious? I suspect the reason is the usual culprit whenever people act strangely and with hostility – and the culprit is fear. What could an interviewer be afraid of?
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They might be afraid of making a hiring mistake. They need to get over it. Everybody makes hiring mistakes, and we learn from those mistakes and then we don’t make the same mistakes again – we make new ones!
I understand that people get fearful at work, but that’s not a good enough reason to treat job applicants badly. Until I got out into the wide world I was sheltered. I was an HR person for many years. I didn’t realize that many if not most companies interview candidates in a stiff and formal way. In the companies where I worked, we had normal, friendly human conversations with job-seekers:
ME: So! You must be Alex.
ALEX: That’s me! Are you Liz?
ME: I am! Let’s go in my office. Do you want some coffee or tea first?
ALEX: I’m good.
ME: Okay!
(Alex and I walk to my office and he sits down in a visitor’s chair. I sit in the visitor’s chair next to him and swivel my chair so we are facing one another.)
ME: So Alex, how did you hear about us?
ALEX: My cousin used to work here. Jack Mitchell – he was a lab tech here. He got married and moved to Alaska.
ME: I remember Jack! Please tell him I said hi. How does he like Alaska?
ALEX: He loves it. He’s a big fisherman and kayaker and all that kind of stuff.
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ME: That’s tremendous. So Alex, shall I tell you a little bit about the National Accounts Coordinator job?
ALEX: Please do.
ME: Well, the job came about because our salespeople are busy selling to new customers, so they don’t have a lot of extra time to take care of our big accounts, and of course those accounts need more attention and hand-holding than most.
ALEX: For sure. Is that hand-holding mostly on the phone?
ME: I’d say it’s a three-way tie between telephone time, email and face-to-face. There’s about thirty percent travel in this job. You’d be out of town about six days a month. Does that work for you?
ALEX: That’s the right amount for me. How does the National Accounts Coordinator interact with the salespeople for the national accounts?
ME: That’s a great question. They interact this way….
Alex and I can learn a ton about the job, the company, Alex, his goals, our goals, the personality of the national accounts salespeople, Alex’s quirks, my quirks, the company’s quirks and the intersection (or lack thereof) between all these things.
That’s how you hire people – by chatting with them. I’d cut my tongue out before I’d interview anyone from a script. That’s not how humans talk to one another.
You get to know people when you have a conversation with them. The way a person thinks is a thousand times more relevant to his or her ability to do the job than his or her experience is! After all, we don’t get to pick our experiences all the time. Just because someone hasn’t done something before doesn’t mean they can’t do it.
Still, the traditional corporate and institutional recruiting mindset is behind the times and you’re going to run into interviewers who will desperately need to know why you’re not working now. They’ll view your unemployed status as the mark of the devil until you clear things up.
Here are some ideas for ways to answer the obnoxious interview question “Why aren’t you working now?”:
“It was clear that it was time for me to leave my last job and I really wanted to focus on my job search, versus trying to juggle my job search with a very demanding full-time job. So, I left the job to become a full-time job-seeker and find my next opportunity.”
You can use this answer whether you quit, got laid off or got fired.
If anyone is so rude as to ask you “Did you quit, or were you fired?” you will say “I quit.” It’s none of anyone else’s business who spoke first on that fateful day – you, or your employer. Some interviewers still hang onto the old-school view that people who got fired are inherently evil or not to be trusted.
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We know that’s not true, but rather than try to educate a person in the moment, you can say “I quit” because in fact, you did quit. If your employer told you to beat it two minutes before you quit, that’s fine, but in my book, you still quit.
A prospective employer will not be able to find out exactly how you left your last employer unless they personally know someone there, because your last employer is very unlikely to risk a defamation lawsuit by telling anybody that you were fired (in their opinion).
Here’s another answer to the question “Why aren’t you working now?”
“I took some time off from my career to spend with a family member who needed my help.”
That’s all you need to say. Few interviewers are badly-brought-up enough to ask “Which family member? What was going on?” and if they do, you can say “The good news is that everyone in the family is in great shape now.”
Even badly-brought-up people will seldom circle back and insist that you answer their irrelevant and highly inappropriate question once you steer the conversation elsewhere.
Here is a third answer to “Why aren’t you working now?”
“I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to help a friend of mine who was starting a new business, and I learned a tremendous amount doing that. Now, I’m excited to get back into the [corporate/startup/whatever] world and apply what I learned.”
The question “Why aren’t you working now?” will not be a central focus of your interview unless you make it a big deal.
It’s not a big deal, of course, and most interviewers only want to be reassured that you weren’t doing something nefarious during the time that has elapsed since you held your last job.
Slip through this question and your answer quickly and carry on with the conversation.
If you’re worried about a gap on your resume, fill in the gap with consulting. You don’t have to list your consulting clients. It doesn’t matter whether you got paid for your consulting work, or not. If you set up a website for your child’s swim team, that counts. If you organized an event for your synagogue, ditto.
It’s a new day. Your confidence and preparation for a job interview are far more important than the specific dates and titles on your resume.
Your mojo is your job-search fuel source, and the only thing powering your incredible career! Take your mojo fuel tank seriously and be sure to do something fun and rewarding every day.
It might be visiting the ducks at your local pond. It might be riding your bike. I look forward to picking a new song for the Human Workplace MOJO Playlist every day. What grows your mojo? That’s an important thing to know!
Listen to the Human Workplace MOJO Playlist here!
Are you job-hunting now? Join Human Workplace CEO and Founder Liz Ryan in a FREE Job Search Webinar on May 11 – register by clicking on the image below!
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
