Question: At my prior job, I held two interim roles. One was that of Interim Executive Director for which I eventually interviewed as a permanent position, but I was not offered the job. When I showed my resume to another recruiter, he began to question me about both interim roles and suggested employers will frown upon the fact that I was not offered either job. Do you agree?
Answer: The facts you outline without any further information do call into question your readiness to take on more responsibility. Had the interim roles been unrelated to your core responsibility, I would conclude otherwise or at least give you the benefit of the doubt. However, if you are offered an interim role, which seems like the logical next step in your career, and you are not offered the permanent role, it is not an encouraging sign. Did you interview poorly? Did you lack core skills? Did your performance as the Interim raise questions as to your ability to conduct business on a permanent basis? We will never know all of the answers. We only know that you were not offered the roles.
You could argue you were not interested in either role. However, the fact that you interviewed is evidence you were interested at least to a point. And, while there are perfectly reasonable explanations for declining roles, you would have to have had an offer in the first place to exercise them.
Short of being able to prove malice or extreme dysfunction on the part of your previous employer, this is truly a difficult sell. The most productive line of attack is if you can think of a particular credential or skill you lacked at the time and have since acquired. To be direct, you must produce some kind of evidence that speaks to not only why you weren’t previously hired but also how those circumstances have since changed to make you more qualified or otherwise suited for the role now.
Contact Karen Alphonse at Karena@execSearches.com or visit ExecSearches.com for more information about our career coaching services.
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