Former Bosses Who Hold a Grudge

Q. Can you tell me how to handle a reference from a prior employer who, for personal reasons, may not give me a good reference? It is a key job in my rsum and one I am proud of, but I don’t trust the former employer. What do I tell –or not tell –my potential employer?

A. Your first strategy: damage assessment, says Pat Berg, general manager of career-management services at Personnel Decisions International, in Minneapolis, who counsels many people who work at nonprofit organizations.

If possible, she says, you should sit down with your previous supervisor, have a conversation about your differences, and find out what he or she is willing to say about you. If it goes well, you might be able to even work together on a recommendation in writing that your former boss could sign.

If you’re on really bad terms with your prior boss, then you’ll want to find someone else that you had a good relationship with at the organization and ask them to give you a recommendation. If you pursue this strategy, prepare not to use your primary supervisor as your key reference during the job interview, says Ms. Berg. When you’re asked about your reasons for leaving that key job, you’ll want to steer clear of anything that suggests you’ve had personality differences. Any potential employer is going to at least raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that you have a former supervisor who holds a grudge against you. Instead, focus on differences in your philosophy or mission with your former organization’s mission and philosophy — a conflict that Ms. Berg says is more readily understood in the nonprofit world. “Talk about your values and where you are in your career and what you want to accomplish at the new organization,” she says.

Finally, make sure that you keep the focus on your positive attributes and not this one sour relationship. In any job-seeking process, she says, “you need to focus on what you have to sell and what value you bring to the organization and not dwell on negative information.”