Should I mention being fired after 3 months on my resume?
Hello Everyone,
I recently joined a small company that advertised a junior position. I cleared the technical task, which was a take-home assignment. In the interview, I was told I was the only one who cleared the assignment.
After 2.5 months, I was told that I was asking too many questions and it was okay for me to make mistakes but not ask questions, so I stopped asking questions. After that, I made a mistake as I misinterpreted how something would work (It turns out both my solution and the instructions given to me were incorrect).
Once the project was finished, I was told I was too junior, my code was not clean, and I was let go from the company. Currently, they are hiring for a senior role with the same job description.
The manager told me he would only give me a referral if I did a non-development-related Google search task during my notice period (which ends in mid-May). He also told me to put my job as contract work. I am having difficulty trusting him to give me a good referral.
My plan is as follows:
- Learn more about clean code and focus on code quality.
- Start working on open source, which might help improve my technical communication skills.
- Build a side project.
- Leetcode
- AWS Certifications
Should I keep the job experience on my resume or not? What are some ways for me to navigate my current situation?
Discussion
(3 comments)- 3
12 days agoSenior Leadership @ Meta | Mentor | Coach | Tech AdvisorThis all depends on the current level and stage of your career. I am reading this as early position and somewhat as a Junior level role (correct me if that's wrong)
In such case if you have done 3+ months you can use that and frame it either as a contract job on your resume or Internship. Both of these could work well as you can call out relevant experience in your next role.
When you apply for new roles you may or may not use your current manager for references. Based on your explanation I can't see anything wrong from your side, I would expect the manager to stay close during your onbaording process and provide constructive feedback and also find mentor/coach within the company to help you ramping up. Asking questions is never wrong or bad idea, better ask than being wrong.
Your approach to this situation seems solid, you are looking for learnings and ways to improve your skills based on the feedback that you have received. This is crucial behaviour for any engineer from Junior to Staff. We all want people that have self-awareness and growth mindset.
Finding ways to improve your coding skills is a must, this is the core skill you do your job through. As you have said best way to do it rhtough practice: side projects, opensource contributions and also working in a company with senior engineers that can provide you with continuous feedback. These are just some way to do that. Read other people's code and try to adopt patterns and structures they are using in their code too.
Finally, stay positive! When you are early in your career, being rejected could be quite difficult thing to deal with. That said keeping a positive mindset, charging forward, improving and achieving your next goal is the only way to grow and improve. So keep going!
- 2
10 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroSorry to hear that this happened to you: A lot of companies don't provide nearly enough support for junior engineers. 😢
If I were you, I would distance myself from this company as much as possible:
- Don't use your manager for a referral (they literally fired you, I would definitely not trust them to put in a good word!)
- Leave it off your resume
- Delete it from your LinkedIn
2.5 months isn't a long time, so showing this work experience doesn't have much benefit. It will invite a lot of awkward questions, and even if it doesn't, recruiters/hiring managers will assume bad things about you. The longer resume gap from just pretending it never happened is worth it IMHO.
Anyways, check out our job searching course to bounce back: [Course] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer
After you finish the course, I recommend plugging more into the Taro community, particularly with attending events. We're here for you!
- 010 days agoEntry-Level Software Engineer [OP]Taro Community
Thank you very much! I am almost done with the course and will attend as many events as possible.
