> For instance, if they ask you why you left Amazon, you'd better not be saying "I found an important problem and I didn't get recognition for it." Tell them you had a personal emergency or something.

Can I push on that a little? Lying is a Bad Move. There are, however, ways to finesse the conversation if it comes to that.

But there's literally no reason you can't just come out and say, "I wasn't getting benefits, and I need benefits." Honesty works there. It's fine to say, "I'm looking for a career with a brighter future than warehouse work, and I think I have the skills to work here because {insert experience}."

I'm not a frequently flyer on either side of the interviewing table, so I don't know for sure how this sort of advice sounds, but when I interview I expect honesty. If the process isn't candid, neither party is happy and there's a lot of wasted time and money on both sides.

"Finessing" the conversation and telling partial truth is also lying. No one ever got hired without some lying, whether they exaggerated some part or left out another.

E.g.

"Why did you leave Company X?"

"I hated it and was fired for low performance. But I'm much better now!" said no one ever.

Say "family emergency" and they'll always take you at your word and leave it at that. Just don't overdo it -- more than one of those might look a little fishy.

> "Finessing" the conversation and telling partial truth is also lying. No one ever got hired without some lying, whether they exaggerated some part or left out another.

I suppose that's an opinion, though I disagree.

There are certain things, for example, that an HR rep is not allowed to ask you by reason of law. I omit questions and don't volunteer information like that all the time; is that a lie? I also never, or rarely, volunteer my current salary; is that a lie?

It's always the case that different perspectives tell the same story in different ways, and part of what OP may need is a changed perspective.

If I were fired from a job for cause, it's likely that I'd need to have an explanation. Not all places will check references or confirm employment history, but were I a hiring manager I would. If that came up I'd want to chat with references and the candidate about the situation.

I dunno, OP seems to have realized (according to other comments) that it was a bad move, and "I randomly decided to give up a job that in retrospect I could have put up with" does sort of seem like a personal emergency. :) To be clear I'm definitely not saying that you should make up a story "I had to take care of my grandma" or whatever.

I don't advocate lying (and as a personal quirk I'm very unlikely to tell an outright lie). But it's going to be very difficult to explain why you left all of those jobs in a way that doesn't scare an employer. If you can drive the conversation to roughly "it was a bad time in my life," that seems a) basically true b) personal enough that it'd be unprofessional for the interviewer to probe for details c) unlikely to make the interviewer fear that it will be an ongoing problem.

I guess the real advice here is, come up with an answer for this very foreseeable question, which you can say with a straight face and without getting yourself into more trouble.

> But it's going to be very difficult to explain why you left all of those jobs in a way that doesn't scare an employer.

If you work at a place for two months, don't put it on the resume?

If you have a gap in your employment, you need to be able to talk about that, but you don't have to talk about each stop.

In an interview, I'll ask about gaps. One ran something like, "I was laid off in {year} and took {weeks} to recover. It took me {months} to find a job at {company}. I took the role because of my financial situation, but I'm interested in you because I think our situations overlap better." That's not quite verbatim, but similar to what I had with someone we hired (I was part of the interview team, but I've never been a hiring manager). It didn't raise any red flags to me. His experience at his prior employer wasn't good, but he communicated effectively that he felt like we'd be a better fit, and we were.

Anecdotally, we had a candidate come in who was junior but pretty well educated. A thin resume in his situation would have been fine: we understood where he was coming from. I perceived a little insecurity from the two-page resume that could've been reduced to a few line items with a stronger emphasis on skills he brought to the table, and with a little probing on technical matters found that his purported experience was not what I would've expected from his background. Less in this case would've been more.

I don't know the OP from Adam, so I'd hesitate to offer much advice here; from the comments I'd think that there's a good reason to talk to a good counselor about the personal background and challenges and address the professional retooling after: but that's hard when you're down on your luck without money. Churches often offer this sort of service, but reading between the lines I'd guess that may not be an avenue for the OP.

Professionally I'd concentrate on starting over or looking to see if there are trade schools that would accommodate. One local to me is completely free and would provide a skillset for at least earning a living while trying to pursue other interests.

It sounds like OP's employment history consists entirely of 2-month-ish stints, and so leaving short stints off would mean having no professional experience on the resume.

Now, that might actually be the right answer in this case (your "starting over" suggestion, more or less).

> But there's literally no reason you can't just come out and say, "I wasn't getting benefits, and I need benefits." Honesty works there.

The problem is that (a) you should have noticed the lack of benefits before you accepted the job, and (b) it doesn't make any sense to quit due to lack of benefits without another job lined up that does provide benefits.