Reason for leaving - Truth or Dare

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During my time as a recruiter, I have seen CV’s with many different stories to tell. One element that most recruiters will spend some time on when screening CV’s is to trying understand why a candidate has left their previous companies and why they would like to move now. 

For me as successful recruiter identifying a candidates “move motivators” is a critical part of successfully placing a candidate who will stay with a company. Individuals who have a history of moving frequently can spell disaster for any recruiters client relationship. However, there needs to be a careful balance when identifying reasons for leaving vs time stayed in a company. There is, of course, the chance that candidates may not disclose the entire truth to the recruiter or hiring manager regards their previous move motivators while being interviewed. An experienced recruiter can however very quickly establish the real reason for leaving during a face to face interview or from a reliable reference.  Most candidates will provide hints when telling their story, it takes a very astute candidate to hide their previous reasons for leaving under intense interrogation. 

Everybody has a career that has ups and downs and we all find ourselves in a position where our career journey takes an unfortunate lousy turn. When moving through an interview process, the screening practitioner will often focus on trying to identify problem areas in the candidate's background wasting valuable interview time.

So as a candidate how do you prepare for these probing questions when moving through an interview process especially knowing that you do not want to get hankered down by a few minor negative issues in your CV and stall a potentially good interview. 

The secret is really to keep your narrative simple and to the point - don't give the interviewer a reason to start an interrogation process. So let’s examine some of the most common cause for moving and my opinions on each. 

No Career advancement  or no room for growth

The weakest reason that you can provide when discussing this all-important topic. Essentially what you are the interviewer is that you are leaving because you weren’t prompted! Or even worse that when you joined the company, you forgot to establish if there was an opportunity to grow in the business and of course your reasoning is that its the companies fault. I see this move motivator in almost 90% of the CV’s I screen and surely not all these companies suffer from this problem. 

Hate my boss

Please don’t mention this you will get killed in an interview. 

Poor corporate culture 

Also not great as you will be left in your interview trying to explain what a good corporate culture fit is and you better hope that you answer matches the interviewer's company corporate culture. 

Company in financial difficulties 

This is an excellent reason for leaving but also needs to be used with caution as an interview may see you as a disloyal employee moving at the first sign of problems. You may also find yourself in a position where the questions may be asked, why you did not spot this problem when initially joining the company especially if you joined at a financial or managerial level. 

Company not performing well

Again we face the problem of how to explain why you feel the company is not performing well and again will be faced with the all-important question providing context. This reason, however, can be a very good move motivator when explained with logic. 

These are just a few reasons provided by many of candidates I have interviewed. 

It is my advice that you never disclose your reason for leaving in your CV, preferably provide this reason when you meet with your recruiter or hiring manager. I will be shedding more light on this important topic in my future articles, in the interim happy hunting!

Rob Ridout

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