Ask HN: How do you talk about past jobs you regret in interviews?
Reframing Bad Jobs as Learning
- Many comments stress that even terrible roles yield benefits: exposure to how an industry really works, experience with difficult people, handling chaos, clarifying one’s own values.
- Advice: list 3–5 concrete lessons or growth experiences, and center your story on those (“I learned X,” “I got hands‑on with Y,” “It pushed me out of my comfort zone”).
Managing Emotions Before Interviewing
- Several argue you must process the anger first (with friends, a therapist, or journaling) so it doesn’t leak in interviews.
- Techniques suggested: write down everything that annoyed you, then later revisit each item to extract at least one positive takeaway.
What Interviewers Say They Look For
- Behavioral questions are used to assess initiative, influence, growth mindset, diplomacy, and ability to work within constraints, not to audit every detail of your past job.
- Negative talk about prior employers is widely seen as a red flag: it raises suspicion that you might be the problem or will badmouth the new company later.
- Strong answers show reflection (“what I’d do differently”), constructive handling of conflict, and an ability to stay positive or neutral under stress.
How to Talk About Negative Experiences
- Focus on situations and constraints, not on “bad people.” Describe challenges neutrally and then what you did (STAR format).
- Rephrase harsh judgments into neutral or “corporate” language (e.g., unstable strategy → “goals changed frequently”; terrible manager → “different approaches we worked to reconcile”).
- Keep it brief, specific, and end on growth: skills gained, results achieved, or why the new role fits better.
NDAs, Short Tenures, and Obvious Red Flags
- For NDAs: say so explicitly, stay high‑level, and emphasize what you learned rather than confidential details.
- For short or clearly bad stints: use a “selective truth” about misaligned expectations, stage of project, strategy differences, or broader instability.
Debate: Honesty vs Spin and Corporate “Performance”
- One camp: interviews are sales; you must “spin” everything positively, even if it feels fake. Some openly embrace this as politics and a survival skill.
- Another camp: radical or at least substantial honesty; they’d rather filter out companies that can’t handle candid talk about politics, burnout, or bad management.
- A middle position: don’t lie, but practice “mental reservation” and tact—compliment what you can, omit the worst, and remember the goal is to show you can be constructive, not to deliver a post‑mortem.