You can secure an interview despite having a demotion on your resume. It’s not an ideal situation, as the employer might feel that you have lost motivation and the sight of their goals which resulted in demotion.
However, that is simply not true. Your entire career cannot be defined by a single demotion. According to a recent survey, forty-six percent of HR professionals witness a demotion at their company. Therefore, unfortunately, demoting employees is not an uncommon practice. But it should not shake your confidence when you apply for any job opening.
Your interview is your chance to humanize your experience, explain that the circumstances that led to your demotion were outside your control, and show that you did great work at all of the roles you were in.
One of the things that can help make your interview go smoothly is if your resume tackles your demotions well. To learn how to talk about demotions on your resume in a way that doesn’t undersell your skill and expertise, check out my article on the topic here.
Now let’s go over a few tips that can significantly improve your interviews if you’ve been demoted.
Quick side note: I’d love to offer you my quick, two-page resume cheat sheet, which breaks down exactly how a marketing manager was able to double the initial offer they received. You can use it to initiate a more smooth job application process after any demotions. Submit your information below to receive it:
Name* Email Address* SubmitWhen explaining demotions in your interview, keep your response to under 60 seconds or less. This will help you stay positive and avoid giving more detail than is necessary.
How do you know if your answer is 60 seconds or shorter? Simple — it takes the average person about 60 seconds to speak five sentences. Count the sentences in your answer discreetly in your hand to encourage yourself to stop at the 60-second mark.
You can make notes of the points that you want to cover and rehearse them.
Here are a few templates to help you with explain your demotion during your interview and win the interviewer’s confidence.
Demoted Recently
When explaining demotions during the interview, highlight what your current job title is and how it is a bigger challenge and more in line with the role you’re interviewing for. The key is to carefully study the parallels between the role you have and the role you’d like to do. In your interview response, highlight those key strengths, especially if you didn’t have the chance to utilize those strengths fully in the “bigger” role. For example:
I started at FSK as a Logistics Director in 2017, when we were only shipping through the United States and Mexico. I saw that we could easily expand our operations to Panama, Guatemala, Colombia, and Ecuador by improving the utilization of our vendor relationships. In 2019, to help oversee manufacturing operations in a facility that tightly collaborated with vendors in these countries, I accepted a Logistics Branch Manager position. Since 2017, FSK’s logistical network has more than tripled in terms of cash flow. I took on the Manager role as a lateral move to further focus on my management skills, which are more in line with the role you are hiring for.
Note that this answer is only four sentences long and should not take more than a minute to convey.
Demoted A While Ago
The same approach as “demoted recently” should work. However, it would be a good idea to add a sentence that sounds something like what I underlined below. In other words, when explaining such demotions during the interview, focus on what you have achieved since being demoted:
In 2017 I joined FSK as a Logistics Director, we were only shipping through the United States and Mexico. I saw that we could easily expand our operations to Panama, Guatemala, and Colombia by improving our vendor relationships. In 2019, to help oversee manufacturing operations in a facility that tightly collaborated with vendors in these countries, I accepted a Logistics Branch Manager position.
Since 2017, FSK’s logistical network has more than tripled in terms of cash flow. Since taking on the manager role, I was able to launch three product lines. Product line launches are something I am very passionate about; the hands-on achievements that I was able to secure as manager would have been difficult in my director-level role. I took on the Manager role as a lateral move to further focus on my management skills, which are more in line with the role you are hiring for.
Again, the key is to focus on skills that overlap between the role you were demoted to and the role you’re interviewing for.
Sounds Like a Demotion, But Isn’t
Talking about this is really straightforward in interviews. Let’s pretend you’re a sales person with a “Consultant” job title. If asked about your job title, you could say something like this:
At SmartCorp, our corporate headquarters wants all of our job titles to be client-facing. Their reasoning is that if a lead saw “sales” in my job title, they might not be inclined to reach out to me for help. However, by using “Marketing Consultant,” I am able to connect and sell to mid-sized companies that need marketing services. My role predominantly involves sales, however.
Or, if your role involves sales, but it’s not what you did all the time, you could say something like:
Yes, my role at SmartCorp did involve consulting with mid-sized companies on their marketing projects, but a major component of my job was managing the sales cycle for these companies; to do this, I collaborated heavily with our sales manager. Last year, I was given a quota of $4 million. I ended up exceeding my quota by $1.8 million.
Looking for more help on how to tackle demotions? Check out these links:
Do you need some help with preparing for interviews? You can also schedule an interview coaching call with me. I will guide you on how to tackle any specific problems that you might be facing.
To learn how to tackle a demotion on a resume so that you’d have sure shot at getting an interview, check out these tips.
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