Why Are You Leaving Your Job?

Unless you are one of those lucky individuals who really enjoys job interviews and loves sitting there answering questions about yourself, then you may find yourself struggling to answer certain interview questions. One of the toughest is answering Why you are leaving your job?

How To Answer This Tough Interview Question

It is a perfectly reasonable question for an interviewer to ask. Anyone would be interested why, if you are currently working, you are interested in leaving your job.

There can be many reasons why you are leaving. There may be positive ones such as you simply thought it was time to move on as you had achieved all of your objectives in your current role. However, there may also be more negative reasons such as not enjoying your last job. For example because you had a poor team leader or you didn’t like the work culture.

Should you be honest?

Yes, of course you should be honest when you are in an interview but being brutally honest can be a disaster interview wise. If the truthful answer to why you want to leave your current role involves being disparaging about your current boss or workplace then you need to think again and come up with a better answer fast.

Interviewers will almost certainly sympathize with your current boss when given an answer like this. Such an answer sends out alarm signals to hiring managers. They don’t want to burdened with a ‘difficult’ employee which this sort of answer portrays you as.

Re-framing Your Answer

What you need to do is be honest but ‘re-frame’ your answer whilst still being honest. So, for example, this answer:

In my current role my boss always gives me the worse jobs to do and because he dislikes me I’ve been passed over for promotion many times. I can’t stand working there for much longer.

Should become…

I’ve decided that I’d like to learn and progress in my career. I felt that the opportunities were a bit limited in my current role. It was why this job with your company was so attractive. Your excellent attitude to staff development is well known. So I think that I will thrive here because of it and be a valuable asset to the company.

As you can see from this answer, you’ve simply shifted the focus of your answer from the negative reasons you want to move jobs to the more positive reasons, from the past, to the future. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this and it avoids negativity creeping into the interview. The more positive you can keep things the better and the more likely you are to get the job .

Be honest in your answer but focus on the positive reasons rather than the negative and you’ll be one step closer to landing the job.