Applying for a job where I'd prefer that they don't talk to my previous supervisor. How?

[drm604]

I've never had any real personality conflicts with co-workers up until my last position. I'm not sure if the supervisor didn't like me or if he was simply incompetent. He would leave things out of my instructions and when I didn't perform the task correctly he would say that he had given me the complete instructions. He was a long time supervisor and I was the new guy, so you know how that went.

I had two strikes against me and I was heading for a third which would have led to termination. Rather than be terminated for cause I quit the job and started putting my full time efforts into what had been my side business.

I was starting to have some success with the business when the economic problems happened. Since then I've been losing money and I'm now near the end of my resources.

Because of this, I'm once again looking for full time employment. My concern is that employers, understandably, want to know about previous employment and will often want to contact previous employers. I am good at what I do (when I'm not sabotaged, obviously) and have very good references available from my job previous to my most recent job.

I'd prefer not to have potential employers talk with my manager from my most recent employment. I'm currently filling out an employment application for a job for which I am qualified and which would be perfect for me in many ways - very short commute, etc. It's asking for past work experience. One of the questions for each past employer is "May we contact your previous supervisor for a reference?". It has "Yes" and "No" for the choices.

It strikes me that checking "No" for my most recent supervisor is obviously a bad idea, but checking "Yes" is also obviously a bad idea.

Any suggestions on how to handle this? I've been told that I should never talk bad about a previous employer or supervisor, which seems like very sensible advice. So how can I convince them to rely on my references from my next to last position? Do I check "Yes" or "No" on the question and, if I check "No" how do I explain the answer?

[drm604]

1. Kick.

No advice?

[tinymontgomery]

2. You could put

You could put contact me prior to contacting previous employer. Then you get the opening statement. Don't bad mouth the person but you could just say the personality for the job wasn't working out for a good relationship so the best thing you could do was move on to help everyone out, or something to that effect. Stating that there was a conflict isn't bad mouthing, that is the most important part of it. Good luck.

[drm604]

3. They will be seeing me prior to contacting him.

The interview is tomorrow and they emailed the employment application which I've filled out and will be taking with me. I'm really hesitant to say that there was a personality conflict. In this economy I probably have lots of competition for the job so any hint that I might not fit in could count against me if it were to come down to me and one other person.

After I posted this a friend suggested that former managers are very reluctant to bad mouth previous employees these days. This may be especially true in this case since this was a large corporation. The odds are pretty good that all he'll tell them is that I did work for them. I'm going to put down the phone number for HR for the contact number in the hope that they may get a noncommittal confirmation of my employment from them and then go no further.

I spent 9 years at the job before that one and I have three excellent references from there. Hopefully that will make the difference.