Ask HN: How do you talk about past jobs you regret in interviews

danielvaughn · 2025-04-20T13:14:03 1745154843

Having been on both sides of the table, I can offer a few pieces of advice:

1. It’s probably best not to mention negative experiences unless it’s prompted by the interviewer. In some cases it may be super relevant and unavoidable, but aside from that, best to leave it alone.

2. Be clear and unambiguous about what was negative. Don’t be vague. I once had a candidate say something like “yeah and that job didn’t end very nicely…I’ll just leave it at that.” This is not a good thing to say in a job interview.

3. Always tie it to something positive. The story should end with a note about how you grew from the experience.

HorizonXP · 2025-04-20T13:26:21 1745155581

This is great advice.

Unfortunately, most people you’re going to encounter don’t have the depth or maturity to be good interviewers.

Some do though, and they know the truth. There is rarely a job in the world where everything is positive. If you can communicate the negatives in a way that I can understand, empathize with, and that demonstrates your ability to handle it with grace, maturity, and humility, I would probably value that more. At the same time, if you’re someone that harbours a grudge over it, like if someone decided against your advice and you’re bitter over it, I’ll take notice too.

Basically, you need to be a team player, but not an automaton. If we wanted that, we have AI now.

pyfon · 2025-04-20T13:32:45 1745155965

For 2 what do you say if there is some kind of exit contract like NDA.

joshuanapoli · 2025-04-20T13:32:17 1745155937

You’ll have to muster some positive energy from yourself: write the experience in a positive way: “I learned here that authenticity is important to my leadership style; I expect that my team to be motivated by serving the customer, rather than checking off busywork for made up deadlines.” And practice giving that positive statement with a friend or in a less important interview.

riyanapatel · 2025-04-16T23:51:17 1744847477

The truth is, while you had past jobs you hated or regretted it, you got something out of it. You learned to deal with difficult people, you learned to manage hard situations, you navigated through tumultuous times, you learned a ton about growing, and you found out what you were capable of even in the darkest times. If anything, this can be super positive. You can also just say your past roles "were a good start to your career but didn't fit my future goals as much as this role does" and then jump in to what you want to do in your future and how this role fits.

siminm · 2025-04-16T18:43:53 1744829033

1) It sounds like you have a decent amount of negativity built up from your previous role, and you haven't quite vented it all out. Get it out of your system -- talk to a friend that gets how annoying that was and vent until you're tired of talking about it. Get heard and you'll feel like the negativity is finally behind you.

2) Think about the opportunities that your previous job gave you. Specifically opportunities. Every time a negative thought comes up, ask "What was my opportunity at that moment?" and write down your answer. Opportunity to disagree and commit? Great. Opportunity to solidify your understanding of your own values? Great! Opportunity to challenge yourself and work on something outside of your comfort zone? etc. Write those down and brag about them to your next amazing job!

brudgers · 2025-04-18T20:10:44 1745007044

talk to a friend

Or a therapist because the experience has a negative impact on the ability "to function" to the degree that finding a job is "functioning."

["Scare quotes" to clarify I am not making value assumptions about the OP]

kwertyoowiyop · 2025-04-20T13:20:23 1745155223

“I learned a lot” - this has the advantage of being, hopefully, true. And you probably worked with some interesting and talented people. Think about your positive interactions with them.

muzani · 2025-04-18T23:21:59 1745018519

We ask this question in interviews too. One purpose is we want people who disagree and can handle this maturely. Everyone has negative experiences. People who don't have likely never tried anything difficult. But you have to be diplomatic about this.

Practice it. Write the answer. Go over it for 20 hours. Treat it like a presentation because it is. I go so far as to make an AI "interviewer" in Vapi so I can voice it out, and you can mod the tone to be supportive, indifferent, sarcastic, etc.

If you're disappointed with yourself, say that. Humans make mistakes. Someone out there started smoking or drinking once. Someone had an affair. You don't know which of your interviewers did which, but you can assume that everyone has done something they knew was a bad idea.

It's also reasonable to assume that an applicant is leaving for reasons. Bored? Wants more money? That's a pretty bad reason. Unhappy? That's a much better reason. What's the catch? Why is this property on the market for cheap? A trick is to imply what people want to hear - you're looking to work with smarter people, better processes, get your shit together, etc.

alganet · 2025-04-18T23:26:29 1745018789

There are many interview guides available on the internet. They often contain good advice for how to behave in an interview.

There's no secret, actually. Be kind and be honest.

dtagames · 2025-04-16T18:16:43 1744827403

There is always a positive takeaway after you get enough distance from something. My last studio was a complete catastrophe. I was angry for a while after they laid us all off. But I realized that I had been given a college education in how Big Gaming really works and been paid 2 years of salary to attend. I took that education to do my next thing that I'm working on now.

shoo · 2025-04-19T06:04:44 1745042684

when i interviewed candidates for software engineering roles in $non-tech-megacorp i was primarily interested in how folks did in the problem solving / coding / API design interviews.

but, we also asked some behavioural questions about past experiences. we don't say it explicitly, but we're looking for responses like --- can you say some words that suggest you have demonstrated initiative at work, or you can sometimes influence others and build support for a decision rather than unilaterally doing stuff without consultation (we're $megacorp, not $startup...) . you don't need to be able to talk at length about all aspects of your past job, but you do need to be able to offer a few examples of That Time When I Demonstrated Initiative, or That Time When I Influenced The Stakeholders that can be mashed into a digestible Situation / Task / (your) Action / Result format & where you can give a few reasonable answers to follow up questions from interviewers who probe and ask annoying questions like "so, what exactly were your responsibilities?"

another thing we'd be probing for is "growth mindset" type stuff. a bad response to "if you were in a similar situation in future, what would you do differently?" is "nothing, everything i did at $oldjob was optimal". a response that shows some reflection, a willingness to admit not everything you do is perfect, and concrete ideas for improvements to behaviour or process comes across much better. no need to enumerate all your worst failings, cherry-pick and offer one or two lesser ones.

for these kinds of behavioural questions based on past experience, we didn't really care if junior / intermediate hires struggled to give strong responses. We would be a lot more concerned about poor responses to these questions for engineering managers or other positions with a leadership component.

having a prepared short form answer to "why are you applying for a job here" is also a good idea.

if you have friends or acquaintances who regularly interview folks who you can hit up for a favour, you could see if they'd be willing to conduct a mock interview and then give you feedback about things you could improve on.

mytailorisrich · 2025-04-16T18:24:55 1744827895

Find positive and useful things you did or learned there and invent a story around them to tell at interviews.

While you don't want to lie about your qualifications, achievements, titles, responsibilities, I don't see an issue with inventing a story to get these points across. It doesn't matter.

PaulHoule · 2025-04-16T19:04:12 1744830252

If you did do "pretty cool work" be prepared to say what was cool about it. It may be a struggle but it's what you have to do.

HenryBemis · 2025-04-20T05:38:00 1745127480

  Bat shit crazy management = top management's strategic goals were frequently updated
  We did everything in Excel = tooling was not optimal, budget restrictions limited out tech
  My manager was a fucking moron = although we had different approaches on topics, we worked to complement one-another, for much better outcomes

But basically as other(s) said, don't focus on "they were assholes" but (whatever YOU did in some nice detail) "I updated the SOP to deliver X, Y, _and_ Z using so-and-so, and at half the time, freeing up 0.25 FTE that we collaborated to enhancing A, B, _and_ C operations.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 · 2025-04-20T13:20:33 1745155233

My work buddy has a gift for corporate speak. We were toying with the idea of preparing an updated 'english to corporate' dictionary.

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