I've been terminated twice. Once was an actual "firing", complete with PIP, and the other was very odd in that it came out of nowhere (from my perspective) and they refused to give any reason.
My approach is just to be honest: "I was terminated from xxxx. Here's what I did wrong, here's what I would do differently today, and here's how I think they could have handled it to better."
For the second one... I mostly focus on how that experience motivates me to be as transparent as possible with my employer and seek solid metrics to judge my own performance.
I don't know if those events being on my history have negatively impacted me or not. I don't think I've ever been passed over during interviews because of them, but it's entirely possible that I was filtered out before getting to that point.
The bottom line is that I know where my strengths and weaknesses are. I know what value I bring to the table and more importantly I know how to communicate that. I'm not afraid to speak up and acknowledge when I'm wrong, and I do my best to use empathy in dealing with others in similar circumstances.
I've long told the story in interviews about the time I accidentally wiped out a production database, and how I was able to work under pressure to very quickly fix the problem. I say another company has already "paid for that part of my education" - I learned from the experience and am very confident I won't be making that mistake again. Those two terminations? Those were also part of my education. I learned from them, and won't be making those mistakes again either.
My approach is just to be honest: "I was terminated from xxxx. Here's what I did wrong, here's what I would do differently today, and here's how I think they could have handled it to better."
For the second one... I mostly focus on how that experience motivates me to be as transparent as possible with my employer and seek solid metrics to judge my own performance.
I don't know if those events being on my history have negatively impacted me or not. I don't think I've ever been passed over during interviews because of them, but it's entirely possible that I was filtered out before getting to that point.
The bottom line is that I know where my strengths and weaknesses are. I know what value I bring to the table and more importantly I know how to communicate that. I'm not afraid to speak up and acknowledge when I'm wrong, and I do my best to use empathy in dealing with others in similar circumstances.
I've long told the story in interviews about the time I accidentally wiped out a production database, and how I was able to work under pressure to very quickly fix the problem. I say another company has already "paid for that part of my education" - I learned from the experience and am very confident I won't be making that mistake again. Those two terminations? Those were also part of my education. I learned from them, and won't be making those mistakes again either.