How do you handle the dreaded ........

How do you or should i say what would you say once the dreaded topic of your termination from a job comes up. How would you phrase it and how do you handle it? I really don't want the potential employer calling up former employer and she ripping me to shreds with negativeness and potentially loosing job because of her comments that would be made.

Isn't there a law that if a ref check is called they can only give dates of employment only and no reason as to why person is no longer employed? and can you request to not contact former employer at local level and contact at a corp level( completely in another state) where they dont know the at hand reasons/issues which lead to the volitile fall out?

[AOIIBrandi]

Most companies today will not allow individual managers to give reference checks for liability reasons. They usually have to call Human Resources. In the case of some large corporations (think Fortune top 10 or the like) there is a special 800 number that a potential employer calls. It is an automated system they dial in your social and it confirms you were an employee.

At my current company we are not allowed to give any information to someone calling for a reference check other than to transfer them to HR or advise them that they will need to call back and speak with someone in HR.

[ReachTheLimit]

No, there is no law that says that they can only give out dates of employment, however, most companies have this as an internal formal policy to only disclose dates only to keep from being sued.

However, depending on the type of employment, certain aspects of a negative employment record may be communicated to a future employer, if you have failed a drug test, were terminated for stealing, things that are very concrete.

Things that are opinion based, ie. She didn't get along with her co-workers, employers are walking on the edge of a lawsuit by giving out that type of info.

Good luck in your job search.

[SigmaChi005]

We are allowed to say 'If this employee applied for a job here, I would not hire them.' then we refer to HR.

If I was you, I would just list the corporate number as the contact number.