Sure. I’m only able to answer in the case where you’ve been fired without cause. Depending on the “cause”, it may be easy to apply these rules, too—but if you have been dismissed because of something that you did that put the company in a bad legal situation (for example), there won’t be much help with this. The fundamental rule of interviewing is not to lie. You don’t have to tell all of the truth about getting fired (nor should you—more in a moment), but you shouldn’t hide anything major. Lying—even by omission—will often lose you the job.

The most common way I was asked this was “why did you move on from COMPANY?” Of course, the truth is that you didn’t move on. Someone else decided to move you on. Say that, without rancor. In my case, it was easy. I usually said something like “I didn’t really choose to move on; COMPANY decided to let me go.” Let’s be clear: you cannot avoid saying this in some form.

You’ll probably be asked why, and there are a couple of choices here. Most companies—especially startups—want to avoid any legal entanglement and so will give you the “changing needs of the business” line. It may even be true, but depending on the quality of your interviewer, that may not be sufficient and you may be asked to speculate on why you were let go. It’s a dangerous line of questioning, because it can sound like an opportunity to be bitter about being let go and letting that bitterness show. Avoid the temptation.

In my case, I generally followed on with something like: “The official reason was because of the changing needs of the business. I personally think that it was because the new MANAGER and I disagreed on the way that a development team should work.” This was perfect for me, because I could expand on my thoughts about how a development team should work and how an extremely senior member of that team (if not the team lead/development manager) should interact with the more junior members of the team.

Depending on the nature of the discussion that I was having, I might be asked a bit more about the situation. In my case, I was able to express my regret for not being with one of the best teams that I had ever worked with and I was able to get into just how differently the MANAGER wanted to run development and how much that showed he didn’t understand the high-performing team.

In that discussion, I never named names and I also expressed some level of uncertainty as to how much my own style could have affected how MANAGER and I interacted leading to my untimely departure. This was important because it helped the interviewer realize that I don’t think myself infallible.

If you have friends from the old job, talk with them to exhaust your bitterness over the departure. Work with people on how you can figure out how to say you regret having been let go because of the lost opportunities, but how you’re moving forward and learning from the experience. Me, I learned that I absolutely don’t want to work for that type of MANAGER ever again and want to make sure that I never turn into that type of manager as I get back into running a team. So far, I’m succeeding.

Note: I have also been laid off once due to a cash crunch—which I didn’t include on my original post. It’s just as much of a gut punch, but I was able to leave that place on good terms, and much easier to explain. People just nod their heads and go “ah”.