Complaining about previous employers

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Complaining about previous employers is often considered a disqualification criterion. One reason for this, I've heard, is that employers would be concerned that they might be complained about also and such would be negative advertisement and bad for business. And this isn't just in an interview, but anywhere. A thought I've had though is this: if an employer abuses their workers so much that they can't help ranting about it, then perhaps the employer has earned their negative advertisement.

Unfortunately, even if the complaint is quite justified, your potential employer may see it as whining and/or that you are not a team player (and among Aspergians, there are few team players). If you believe that it is necessary to advertise your former employer's bad management, then wait until after you have the job. If it a matter of being relevant to an interview question, then it is best to say something along the lines of "I understood my boss' position, but..."

In years past, I often wrote "poor management" as a reason for leaving a previous job ... and I actually believed that was legitimate because I was sure I knew how things *should* be done and I could not deal with things as they were. In any case, a potential employer once asked me for some details, then ultimately told me he was trying to determine whether or not I was just a perpetual malcontent ... and since I think that is what he suspected, I never again wrote that as a reason.

I agree, it's supposed to be a 'no no' in terms of reasons for leaving as it makes you look, as leejosepho says, a malcontent.

Although in my case, one of my previous employers, I would say my contract ended and I relocated, even though that employer has been repeatedly sued in employment tribunals and that's been published and people in the industry know there have been problems with poor management.

I guess it helps to just not dwell on that kind of negative stuff in the past, and to concentrate on positive reasons for wanting a new job, rather than negative reasons for leaving a job.

Instead of saying the boss was terrible and the company sucked, you're supposed to say that you're looking for more responsibility and to develop and improve skills and looking for career progression, or you might say you're looking to relocate, or wanting to pursue a specialism... anything, really, apart from complaining about a previous employer, because you just look like a potential trouble-maker.

Employers get to complain about former employees all the time. The major reason employees can't do so (at least publically) is because (depending on the labour market, of course) most employers have a bit more bargining power than your average employee. Hence, stuff goes down by the employer's standard (whether it's double or not is irrelevant).

And that's generally it. The bland answer.

My current job at the dept. store, during my interview with one of the assistant managers, he asked if there was anything I didn't like about my previous dept store. I said, 'Well, sometimes the hours were a little skimpy. I understand that you can only have as many hours as you have business, but still, I would have liked a little more.'

That is, he gave me a softball question, I gave him a softball answer back. Even if he had given me a hardball question, I think I still would have preferred to give him a softball answer back. Think Tai Chi.

Yes, from that premise, we can ask a lot of questions. We can take a deep breath and ask a lot of very worthwhile questions.

I think a much healthier economic system . . . okay, you know how some businesses give poor customer service, and it can go on for a while, but if a business treats enough of its customers poorly and this becomes widely enough known, the business will literally start to go out of business. Well, I think the same should be true with how a business treats its employees.

Unfortunately, customers are valued as wallet-carriers: they are the input into the system whereas the workers are an output. If every employee at all of the Wal-Marts went on strike today, they'd hire the next handful of applicants the same day and punish any who didn't know what they were doing due to lack of training by firing and banning them for attempting to conquer the universe with a roll of toilet paper made into dingle-berries.

I handle job interviews a little differently than most people; I don't go in with the mindset that I need to impress this guy and get hired, I go in with the idea that they need to prove to me why I should work for them and that they're not a bunch of as*holes. The whole vibe is different that way, and I have a very high success rate once I get to an interview; I think it's the tendency of people to want what they can't have.

That being said, I soft sell any issues I've had with previous employers, but I don't deny them either. I the spin I put on it is that I don't just work for anyone, and if I'm not treated respectfully I'm out of there. Employers seem to respect this, and I've yet to lose a job at an interview where I've trashed a previous employer. After I'm hired I like to tell stories about my old jobs, and some of those can be pretty hairy. though I do hold back the ones where a statute of limitations might still be in effect...

really I've gotten hired with a line something like

"no you may not call my previous employers they were mean insecure nincompoops and I told them so as I quit. I guess i'm too honest sometimes, but you are much more of a leader than they even hoped to be Ill love working hard for you!

usually gets a laugh and a your hired!