how should I explain why I’m leaving my job when the answer is horrible/messy/shocking?

A reader writes:

A few months ago, we had to do an “about me” presentation during a department meeting— we had to post pictures of our families and give a brief description of our interests/who we are. I’m not a big fan of these things for several reasons. One is that I would prefer to keep my family life out of work, and one is that it can cause discrimination, which is the reason I’m writing.

I’m white, my husband is black, and my kids are obviously mixed. Literally the day after my presentation where I posted my family picture, my manager, supervisor, and some coworkers have changed how they treat me. I don’t jump to discrimination right away, but I don’t know what else it could be, especially since things have changed the very next day after my presentation. I’ve never had a write-up or even a verbal coaching during my employment at this company.

We work remotely, and the manager and supervisor are now doing things like:

•. They’ve started scheduling last-minute meetings after 5 pm, then joking with each other the entire time (saying things like, “Oh man, I don’t know how dinner is gonna get cooked”) or keeping me on hold for way past the meeting ending time, only to jump back on and joke around until 9:30-10 pm. I’ve told my manager that around 7 pm I have to cook dinner and get my children ready for bed (and that I would be back on right after), but she’ll respond with something like, “It’s okay to drop for a few minutes, but don’t expect us to still be on the meeting when you return.” But then they’re still in the meeting, waiting for me, then they continue playing around.

•. They changed my role on a project — I was co-lead and now they have me doing small admin tasks for them such as scheduling meetings and updating spreadsheets.

•. They will chastise me for not doing tasks that I was never informed of and when I tell them I wasn’t aware, they laugh.

•. They now talk to me like I don’t know what I’m doing. When I’m in meetings with the three of us and trying to give my input, they will mute me.

•. Other staff are now rude to me and won’t answer any questions I have or will give me the incorrect answer.

•. The supervisor will delete my work out of spreadsheets so I have to go back in to redo it.

•. The manager won’t approve my vacation days. She lets the request sit there until I ask her at least three times about it.

•. I asked both of them directly if there’s anything I should work on to improve, and they just laughed and changed the subject.

There’s so much more that’s going on. These are just the most recent things within the past month. And yes, these are adults acting like this. If someone told me this, I wouldn’t believe it because it’s so ridiculous and immature.

Right now, I need my job so I’m not in a position to file a complaint (I know retaliation is illegal, but that doesn’t stop most jobs). Also, the things they’re doing are difficult to prove, since most of it is verbal/attitude and nothing through writing or that I can easily show.

So my question is, what do I tell interviewers as to why I’m leaving my current job? I’ve been here about eight years and I loved it; everything was great up until I did my presentation. I know you’re not supposed to talk negatively about your job, so I’m at a loss as to what reason I can give during interviews. I can’t give the usual reasons for leaving, since I’m looking for the exact same job/responsibilities I do now.

First and foremost, you work with terrible people. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this.

This would be an outrageously unacceptable way to treat someone regardless of what caused it; it wouldn’t be okay even if you had done something genuinely upsetting or offensive. But it was triggered by discovering you have a black husband and biracial kids? You work with deplorable people.

As for interviews, though, you don’t need to get into any of this at all.

A surprising number of people (at least a surprising number to me) feel like they have to give an honest and comprehensive answer to “why are you leaving your current job?” But you don’t.

When your real answer is something bland (like “I came on board to do X but the job has become mostly Y” or “I really want to work more with tortoises” or even “we’ve been having layoffs and I’m looking for something more stable”), then great, it’s fine to go with that. But if the answer is messy or difficult-to-explain or anything you just don’t want to get into, you can and should just come up with a bland cover story.

I don’t generally advise people to lie in interviews, but you are just not required to share a full messy situation with your interviewer. Really, they’re mostly looking for some quick context to understand what’s going on with your career and how this opening might fit in with it — you’ve reached the limits of how far you can progress where you are and are interested in taking on more responsibility with X, or your team is being laid off, or you’ve just been there a while and were intrigued when you saw their posting, or so on. (Their ears will prick up at other things, though. Most people’s answers to this question are pretty bland, but interviewers will notice if you don’t show a reasonable amount of judgment and discretion in how you answer, or if it sounds like you’re being pushed out for reasons that might be problems at their company too, or if you have have unrealistic expectations that they won’t be able to meet either (because you get bored with all your jobs after three months or bristle at being given direction or so forth), or if the thing you say you’re leaving over is going to be present at this job too, or so forth.)

If you told them what’s going on with your job, it’s not that it would sound like a problem with you — it’s clearly not! — but it’s just a lot more awfulness than an interviewer is expecting or wants to hear about. You’ll have introduced something into the meeting that’s very likely to pull the focus toward something other than why you’d be great at the job.

And in your case, you have a much, much blander answer easily available to you: you’ve been there for eight years! It’s entirely plausible that you’re looking around just because you’re ready to take on something new. The fact that new job would have similar responsibilities doesn’t negate that; it’s still at a new company, with new people, in a new context. You’re allowed to just be ready for a change after eight years.

Whenever you’ve been at your current job for at least a few years, you can always use that as your answer — “I’ve been here X years and learned a lot, but now I’m ready to take on something new.”

Of course, if you haven’t been there very long, you can’t say that or you’ll look flighty and they’ll figure you’ll be bored with this job in a short amount of time too. In that case, there are suggestions here and here for other answers that can work.

I hope that helps, and please let us know once you’re gone so we can all mail your old office unending bags of poop.

The post how should I explain why I’m leaving my job when the answer is horrible/messy/shocking? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

View the full article