Can I Get Employed if I Got Terminated?
If you have been terminated, future potential employers will want to know why. For this reason, while it is certainly possible to become employed again once you have been terminated, it is more difficult than getting employed if you have a spotless work history. Whether or not you get employed again is largely dependent on how you respond to the interview questions about your firing in the interview.
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Post-Termination Resume
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You will have a better chance of getting employed after termination if you have a strong resume that highlights your accomplishments rather than your termination. You don't need to include terminations on your resume. Simply list how long you worked at the job and let your interviewer ask you about why you left. Resumes are intended to highlight positives, so you should still try to write an impressive listing of the duties you had while you were employed, no matter how frustrated you are with the way the job ended. When you revise your resume after you are terminated, don't just focus on the job you most recently left, but make sure your entire resume focuses on your most impressive accomplishments. Sometimes these accomplishments can offset the negative effect a firing has on your interviewer.
Post-Termination Interview
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The first few interview experiences after your termination can be nerve-wracking because you know the interviewer is going to ask you why you left your previous job. However, you will have a better chance of impressing the interviewer and making the interview process positive if you devote as little time to the firing as possible. Even though you may still feel frustrated and like the termination was not your fault, the interview is not the place to discuss this. Instead, Career Builder recommends you say as little as possible about why you were fired and spend as much time as possible talking about your accomplishments. Try to never end the interview with a discussion of the firing. Instead, Career Builder suggests ending on something positive, such as what you learned from the incident.
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Networking
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Getting a job after you have been terminated may mean sending out many resumes and going to a lot of interviews. However, the process will probably be faster and easier if you start by networking with the people you know. You can start by talking to former coworkers, suppliers and business contacts about openings. If they know of one, and are willing to recommend you for the job, your potential employer may not care as much that you were fired from your last position.
Self-Employment
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Self-employment, or working on a freelance basis, is a good way to build up your skills and credentials and still make money while you are looking for another job. In fact, you may even find that you enjoy freelancing so much you don't want to take another position. Consider consulting, working in temporary positions or offering freelance work in any field for which you are qualified, even if it is not where you were most recently employed. If you are out of work for a long time, self-employment of this sort can not only help you avoid large gaps between employment on your resume, but it can also provide you with income.
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