Handling Interviews After Being a Fall Guy?

bheer asks: "Salon's Since You Asked column is carrying an interesting question right now — what do you say in interviews after getting fired as a fall guy at your last job? Cary Tennis, who writes the column, admits he may not be the best person for this sort of question. So I thought I'd ask others what they thought about this. Software developers are sometimes able to get away blaming the business requirements/analysis process, but anyone with any experience in this business probably has had nightmares about being the fall guy and may even have a strategy or two up their sleeve. How would deal with being in such a crummy position?"

Get some letters of reference.

[datastew]

I just went through "Interview Training" and one thing the managers complained about is that they can not find any previous employers willing to give any kind of reference beyond name and dates of employment. It appears everyone is worried about lawsuits.

They stressed that letters of reference are somewhat valuable as a replacement, so make sure you snag some of those before you take the fall.

-no sig

um, no

[MattW]

As a rule, companies refer all questions about former employees to HR. HR, as a rule, will only confirm stated dates of employment, title, maybe salary. Why? Anything bad they say can be construed as slander, and since your new job is on the line, the damages could be significant if slander proves to have cost you a job. They've cut their ties to you, so there's no point to them saying anything bad; it doesn't benefit them.

Some companies wlil say glowing things about someone they really liked who left by choice, and then say nothing about the others. The one negative catch phrase that has seemed to propagate is, "[Person X] is not eligible for employment" or "not eligible for re-hiring" or such, which translates into, "We wouldn't want them back", but is apparently "safe".

Also, again, firing black people isn't that easy. Anyone who's been a manager knows it can be a real bitch to get rid of an employee in any protected class - race, gender, or (in some states) sexual orientation. Firing a straight white guy is a piece of cake; any reason will do, because at-will employment means you can fire them for NO REASON. If you go to HR and tell them you want to fire the gay black woman in your group because she's been snorting coke at her desk, coming in all of 3 hours a week, and took a bat to your car when you asked her about her project, they'd probably ask you to put her on a Performance Improvement Plan for 6 weeks and issue warnings for every infraction before they'd even consider firing her. :p

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it isn't a BIG exaggeration.