How to Handle Liabilities

What do you say when your grades are just so-so or you have little or weak job experience? What if you were fired from your last job? How would you explain that you are changing your career path?

We all have liabilities, and the way we handle them in an interview is an important factor in whether or not we get selected for the job.

A liability is any personal factor or experience that hinders our chances of getting an offer for a particular job. Think about that. What it implies is that what is a strength for one position may be considered a liability for another. A mature, experienced job candidate may well have a liability in a position as management trainee, but a strength for a position as general supervisor.

A liability is just a part of who you are and should never be apologized for during any aspect of your job search!!


To determine what you bring as strengths to the job search process, you spent a lot of time on reflection, on developing a personal inventory, on identifying and composing your accomplishments. It is just as important that you recognize your liabilities, so you can deal with them in the same purposeful manner.

Ask yourself the question, "What is there about me or my background that could work against my getting this job?" If you can't think of any, ask someone else. We all have liabilities. To get you started, here are some of the more common ones:

• Inexperience
• Lack of a degree
• Currently unemployed
• Fired from a job
• Over qualification
• Maturity
• History of job-hopping
• Employment in different field
• Layoff from previous job
• Technical degree/seeking management position
• Liberal Arts degree/seeking industry position
• Youth
• Overspecialization
• Same job for many years
• Low grades
• Generalization
• High-powered M.B.A.
• High earnings
• Low earnings

Select those that apply to you, then add any others that also apply.

If not handled right in an interview, a single liability can offset all of your fine strengths and generate a turndown. To neutralize the effect of your liabilities, we suggest the following steps:

• Set the interviewer at ease by recognizing the liability as a legitimate issue or concern.

"Your specifications stated that the position requires a minimum of three years of experience in purchasing, and I think it is a legitimate concern that my experience has been in Finance."

• Identify the strength that is perceived by the interviewer as missing.

In the above example (lack of experience), the perceived missing strength is the ability to contribute quickly without the need of extensive training. The lack of experience is not the real concern.

"I can appreciate that this job requires someone who must immediately contribute as a purchasing representative without the luxury of an extensive training or learning period. He must begin to work immediately with vendors and internal managers to service effectively your new plant start-up scheduled for this summer. Is that a correct assessment?"

• Prove that you have the strength that the interviewer has perceived as missing.

"I believe that many of my skills in administration will directly transfer to the purchasing functions and will allow me to begin contributing immediately to the start-up. As an accountant I serviced all levels o f management and developed strong communication skills in dealing with the management. Last summer I assisted each of the 10 managers in developing a planning budget for materials resources...."

This is an extremely important area for you to work on. It can dramatically set you apart from the competition and give you the edge.

For each of your liabilities, develop a 3-step response that will overcome the concern. It will pay off for you.

Adapted from Lafevre, J. L., How to Really Get Hired.

Do you have liabilities? Have you developed a plan for responding to related questions? Have you had the opportunity to deal with liaiblities in your interviews? Let me know if you still have questions.