I had a public mental health crisis and lost my job. Is my career over?
I have been trying to recover from a mental health crisis. This had been building for a while but it finally boiled over, at which point I did some very erratic and irrational things, in a very public way, at work. I was fired and since then, it's been very difficult to find another job.
I'm starting to sense that my reputation is irreversibly tarnished. While I seem to do well in interviews, I never get past the final interview with the CEO or top level exec. It's almost as if they have a blacklist of do-not-hires... Is this paranoia or ought I begin to look outside the startup scene for work?
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 85.9 ms ] threadThis is one of those things that’s not written down anywhere, you have to “just know”.
Never, ever, even vaguely allude to mental health issues.
Say that you took some time off for family health reasons, and now that’s taken care of (implying and meaning that it no longer will distract you or take any time away from work).
In the USA nobody will ask further, if they do they are likely risking violating employment law by opening themselves up to a discrimination claim.
Also yes look outside the startup scene for sure.
Have you seen the salaries on https://levels.fyi/2020 ?
Getting fired once because of this is not the end of the world if you're sufficiently competent. I don't have any practical advice but hopefully that keeps your spirits up a bit.
Needless to say he has an IQ of probably 140+ so he can impress people especially during the interview stage with his sheer intelligence. He can also build things fast. Everyone who works with him acknowledges the skill but finds him too destructive personality wise and it usually results in termination within 6 months. He's switched to remote consulting recently which is a better personality fit.
If your reputation was preceding you, you would likely not get interviews at all. Since you are, that's a good sign you're not blacklisted or something.
Don't worry that bad news about you is coming out during their reference checking or something. professional reference checks are usually along the lines of "Have you heard of this person?" "yes they worked here from x to y" "Great thanks"
I guess my question for you is, do you have any real concrete reason to believe that these companies know who you are before your resume reaches them? Or would find out about your breakdown during the interview process?
Does a really embarassing youtube video of your breakdown appear when they google your name or something?
If not, I'd say you're just having a run of bad luck. It happens. Take courage in the fact that you are making it all the way to the final stages of their interview process and keep trying. You'll get there.
Also I hope you're in a healthier place since your breakdown. Mental health issues suck. Take care of yourself.
I guess I imagine that all the high-level execs get together in hot tubs, smoking cigars and trading blacklists.
You're looking for a similar position you had?
Would you expose yourself to more of the same thing that got to you in the first place?
But make sure you are taking care of yourself and that you have support from a doctor/therapist/family and whatever you need. A therapist and time will help you gain perspective and re-frame the experience. Taking care of yourself is priority #1.
Next if you want to stay in the startup world, you could always go work for a startup in the mental health space. They'd probably be more reasonable. But don't discount a bigger company which would offer you some space where you can focus on yourself for a bit and get great health benefits. There will always be another startup opportunity out there. I'd also go for work for places where you have friends.
Also your mental health crisis probably counts as a disability so you may even have a claim against your previous employer. If you are in the US you can get some advice from your local EEOC office.
See for example: https://screening.mhanational.org/content/can-i-be-fired-my-...
Can you elaborate on whether it is technical or behavioral rounds that you seem to be failing? It might simply be a personality thing with the few places you've talked to.
If you are interested, I am willing to give you a short mock interview and provide you with objective and honest feedback to see if we can figure out what is going on. Feel free to get in touch, contact info is my user profile.
Here are some things that might be comforting for you to hear. They're from my perspective only, so bear that in mind:
I've never seen a "don't hire this person" list, or anything remotely equivalent.
The only way I'd know about a candidate's reputation is if I either knew that candidate personally, or through a friend already, or if you told me you had one.
I've never once asked someone about mental health, just like I haven't asked about age, gender, religion, if they have kids, if they're married, who they want to love, where they grew up, etc.
Knowing about someone's mental health isn't relevant to the interview process - at least not for the roles I hire. Even if I knew, I wouldn't disqualify someone due to mental health challenges. Everyone experiences those challenges, either directly or indirectly. It's part of being a human being living in a community of other human beings. It's also illegal in a lot of states/countries to disqualify a candidate because of previous, current, or predicted mental health struggles.
Reading your answers to other comments, here's what I'd recommend:
You don't need to qualify or describe why you have any gaps in employment. If someone asks, it's because they're wanting to determine if you have gaps because you weren't, in their minds, hirable. It's faulty logic, but it's likely why they ask.
If asked you can simply say: "I took a break."
If prodded for more details as to why, you can stop the prodding with "I wanted to focus on my health."
Any interviewer should know that's a dead end. They cannot dig deeper. They have to move on. If they don't and decide to pry still you can simply say "look, I'm aware that you feel it's important, but it's not, and it might also be illegal to ask. Can we move on?"
If that doesn't give them the hint, you don't want to work there.
Same here, TBH who would bother publicizing names of regular engineers? it's probably illegal, immoral and can't be kept secret for long.
> If asked you can simply say: "I took a break."
Or be semi-honest and say you took a break due to stress or other mental issue, most interviewers won't ask or care more and those who do- you don't want to work for.
Personally, I think it's still worth avoiding. It's similar to how, at least in the US, saying "I'll be out next Thursday" is much better than saying "I'll be out next Thursday because I'm feeling burnt out and need to take a breather so I don't lose it."
I think it's natural to want to explain yourself. It feels courteous even. But it can often motivate people to form opinions about you that don't benefit you, and are probably not accurate anyways.
Consider a scenario where a team member is gone 1 day out of every month. They don't say why, aside from "taking a personal day." Compare that to someone who takes the same amount of time off, but explains the reason for each. "I've been working too hard", "need to take my dog to the vet", "can't work today because I'm barfing", and so on. The "explainer" may be just as productive as the person who doesn't explain, yet, over time, the explainer might end up being perceived as having a lot of "drama", or "frail" or even unreliable.
I'm not just imagining that this can happen either. I've seen these kinds of things considered when managers review an employee's performance. The "non-explainer" taking time off is often not even noticed compared to the "explainer". It's unfortunate, and shouldn't matter, but humans are strange creatures.
1) practice interviews - to find what you are doing
2) volunteer job (must be relevant to your career) - put distance between your last job and the prospective new one. That way the questions can for volunteer work and not the one where you had issues.
I'm on a private slack group for a tech recruiter company; it's well-discussed that the platform is seeing less hires due to the pandemic.