why is it bad to talk bad about your previous employers?

I've tried. I get impatient.
Yells at self.

Believe me I understand.

However:

I have tremendous patience with the truly ignorant and the confused.

I have no patience with the deliberately ignorant and the idiotically certain.

The originator of this thread is in my opinion, a member of the former, not the latter.

(Which is not to say that that Finn is superior to Ogni - although we all know that is the case).

Don't feel bad. Lots of people have, and the ignorant little **** chooses to remain ignorant. Frankly, I'm stunned at the amount of effort people here have spent (wasted mostly) on him.

Having been a member of our historical wayward youth, I like to mentor our current young assholes.

Right there with you when it isn't so clearly a waste of effort. To be fair; at a certain age, your efforts would have been wasted on me too. This kid seems to be at that age.

I tend to have sympathy for assholes, as an old catholic girl. However...

our guy is working the bullshit and getting older while doing that.


Still, we can rail and rally, but I'm not sure he has a clue for how to move past all this. Therein, the task. I like Ogi, have for a long time, as I assume we all do.
Not enough, clues to move past, whether we agree with each other or not...

OK - cast the poor bastard into the desert without salt.

I, not-with-standing the A2K impression of Finn as a spawn of Satan, am here for the kid --- should he be willing to acknowledge I am wiser than he.

it just doesnt make sense.

my old job couldnt get payroll right, i had no checks for 1 montha and a half, they would consistently "forget" about peoples hours at work, especially overtime, they had no idea what they were doing, they were clueless and inefficient..

yet i am supposed to say good things about them?

or perhaps just sya, umm yeah they were, um ok. i guess?

utterly hilarious.

its not about thwt the interviewer thinks of me, its what they think i will say about them, period.

i mean if I did a horrible job in my workplace, and used them as a reference, would they say good things about me?

i bet not! a one way street it seems..


oh well, i have learned the lessons already, i am merely QUESTIONING them. occom, i wish you would realise that.

Many here have already gone over the key reasons but there are a few I think were missed so here's my list:

1) Negative workers are dangerous to companies. There are almost always happy workers and unhappy workers in any company. Unhappy workers can create other unhappy workers and lower morale. So some companies avoid unhappy workers like a cancer, and seek positive and more easy going folk with the right "attitude".

Sometimes your complaints may well be legitimate, but you run a greater risk of coming across as a negative person. In job interviews you want to keep everything positive. It's not just previous employers it's about not being negative period.

Even if the weather sucks, and you are asked about it don't launch into a rant on the weather, be cheerful and upbeat. No matter what the subject is, you want to be POSITIVE in job interviews. You want to come across as that cheerful guy that's nice to work with.

2) There's a saying that goes "a skunk is better company than one who prides himself in being frank". It's something you learn in life, being "right" isn't always as important as not being an ass.

So in life, you learn that you don't tell the little girl that she's the ugliest thing you've ever seen. Even if it is true. It is even more so in a professional setting. People's jobs are at stake, and in work there are always people who will "throw you under the bus" to deflect criticism and professionalism means being very careful about your negative opinions. When I managed people, I was very careful not to say bad things about them if it wasn't necessary. I don't want to see anyone fired because I couldn't stop running my mouth about them, and if even if they did suck and were fired I'd still not bad mouth them to their prospective employers.

If they asked for a recommendation I'd try to highlight the positive about them without lying. I've never heard of a bad recommendation, just lukewarm ones. If the person was really good I'd make that clear in the recommendation. If they were not I'd do a perfunctory job and just try not to screw the guy's prospective employment chances without being dishonest.

In short, bad mouthing your co-workers is bad office politics. Work is very political, and this is the equivalent of a sleazy campaign. Being professional is to be above petty sniping and to be positive with interactions with your co-workers and in the things you say about them.

3) Ok, so your last company was full of idiots. Is that the point you want to make? They are references for you, they hired you. Are you sure you want to make part of your work history about a bunch of people who don't know what they are doing but who hired you?

4) Everyone who is working with enough people has office politics and office drama. It's interesting to nobody else except people who share the same office.

So while at the last job everyone might have nodded in unison while you went off on the ass of a boss that everyone hates, in this new job interview the whole story is just another idiot with office drama that they don't care about.

So since they aren't interested in the story anyway, don't violate the "stay positive" rule in interviews no matter how much you want to rant about your old boss.

Interviewees do this far too often, and the people interviewing them aren't there to be a sounding board for their last job's frustrations and you shouldn't do things like that that will annoy your interviewers.

But hell, you could do a lot worse than all of this. I once had an phone interview with a web designer, and while going over his portfolio he showed me his blog. While we are doing the interview I check out the blog and notice he's badmouthing our company in the first post. He's going on about how he didn't really want this job and the office is too far and that he needed to go back for a new interview (the ones we were doing that day) showed how poorly it was run. He bad mouthed the head of our HR department by name, saying he probably was paid by the head and didn't care about his job and trashed our company as a bunch of idiots.

That was a funny interview, and no he didn't get hired. So if you want to take the "no holds barred" approach with the "blunt", brutally honest "truth" you should let it all out and just expect the same results: avoidance.

Tell the person interviewing you if you find them ugly, hell tell them you find them attactive (it's all the same), tell them how much you like your city, or how much you hate the weather, do whatever you want.

But what you are supposed to be doing, is selling them on how you can help them, and how you are the best of the choices they have. You aren't there to give your opinion on your last job, or anything really. You are there to sell yourself as their best option and whatever you do other than that is a liability in a job interview.

It makes sense to most of us.

Get with it or don't.

If you refuse to, then don't whine about what you ain't getting.

It's not quantum physics.

Where do you want to position yourself and what price are you prepared to pay?

Stop being a bitch and declare.

I didn't mean to toss him without salt, but.. he posted.

"i mean if I did a horrible job in my workplace, and used them as a reference, would they say good things about me?

i bet not! a one way street it seems.."
If you did a horrible job, I'd say so. If you had some inbetween ability, I'd say so. If you made sharp suggestions, I'd say so.


I see this as rolling paranoia from someone without portfolio.

I'm sure you didn't, but cut the kid a break.

Maybe next time he will promote a liberal point of view that you can all declare a prodigy's revelation.

Eh?

You figure I'm working a pov? Please, take a nap. You just wrecked our potential camaraderie.

That's code for "I don't like it". It makes perfect sense. Watch: most people don't feel more compelled to hire a negative nancy than a cheerful worker so being a negative nancy is a stupid thing to do in a job interview.



And you want to spend your few minutes using this as the basis of your work history?

"So, I see you are employed at Green Widgets, why are you looking to change your job?" (a favorite trick question aimed at setting up this whole scenario where you need to show professionalism about your previous job, and not give them any doubts about whether you should be hired in your answer)

Candidate One:
"Oh dear lord! They are a bunch of monkeys who are completely incompetent! I can't wait to tell my boss what I think of him when I get a new job!"

Candidate two
"I learned a lot of valuable lessons there, but I feel I'm ready for a bigger challenge."

You are supposed to make yourself look good, candidate 1 just sounded like a negative nancy, candidate 2 sold himself and gave one of the safe answers about why he's job hunting.



No, you are supposed to talk about you and portray yourself in a positive light. Bashing your old company won't help you in a job interview at all, and runs a large risk of giving a bad first impression.

Once you are in the job, you can say what you want about your old company. They still won't care (remember, office politics is only interesting to the people in the office) but at least you aren't putting the wrong foot forward in the first few minutes you have to make an impression.



It's just life, and the way things are. It's not stupid, it's not wrong, it's human. You can try to mock it all you want but the bottom line is that you need their help and you should be smarter about trying to influence them to pick you.

It's just basic salesmanship, you want a positive reaction from them so don't go in with a load of negative.



No, the interviewer doesn't really care what you are going to say about them personally or the company. It's just about the bad impression. That you are willing to say bad things about your last company gives a bad impression of those negative nancys that every company tries to get rid of and they really aren't that worried about what you might say about them in the future, they just don't want that kind of bad mojo around at all.



It depends, if they really can't say anything nice about you they should tell you they can't be used as a reference. And you should always ask before giving them as a reference.

I've never seen a real-life scenario where someone gave a bad reference. I'm sure it happens, but if I really can't say anything nice I just won't return the calls asking for the reference and I would find it very unprofessional for someone to agree to be a reference and then throw the candidate under the bus.



No, it's a two-way street. Your boss might think you are a total punk but he should try his best not to be inordinately negative about you as well.



Bill a hothead, but he's got a point dude. People go out of their way to help you, and you don't like to play the apprentice. It's not a big deal, and I know you are absorbing a lot of it even if you are too proud to show it, but when people are going out of their way to teach you, they like to see that acknowledgment that it did something. Now I don't think you can really change the way you are, you don't want to own up to your ignorance and don't want to play the eager student but that's what they are talking about.

You can't be both the sensei and the student all the time, so if you go out of your way to ask for advice and then brush it all off so offhandedly it can have the feeling of futility for those on the other end.

Sorry - for how much I care

But we can still be friends

Well, yes, well said by RG.

I've nothing to say in argument to his points.

Why do I think Ogionik will shine us on, I just do.

But I'll listen.

Ogi's absence in this thread is a great horn bellowing.

Hopefully he learned a valuable lesson.

The rest is ...blah, blah and blah

I'm not clear re your level(s) of sarcasm, or any balance re my own, Finn.

This is not meant to charm. Just saying, I don't always speak with venom.