Got laid off a Big 4 consulting firm due to "performance not up to the mark". Looking for ideas on how to answer this question in job interviews... "Why did you leave the firm XYZ"?

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You were looking for a new challenge. Always describe what you hope to find and willing to give. Never ever talk bad about your previous employer or the team

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Corona virus?

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Needed a personal break from consulting to work through XXxXx item ?

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I would say "cultural mismatch" or "something I can feel truly passionate about."

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Work life balance. High travel was not the job for you. But what ever you do don’t slam your past employer, that never works out for you

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Thanks for the ideas. Very helpful. I'm thinking to go by the below answer, which is true to a great extent... Will this answer work in a job interview without creating a negative perception about me?

There were several reasons of me quiting the job:
1) work life balance. Traveling every week for the last 2.5 years has impacted my personal life and my relation with my Spouse. And I was not able to give enough time to my 3 years old daughter.
2) I'm a technical person who likes to get his hands dirty and do real stuff like development, coding, execution. Consulting job was not giving me enough opportunities to do that. It was more about advising the clients and providing functional guidance rather than actually performing those tasks myself.
3) I want to learn technical tools in the area of my interest and master them rather than learning many tools at a high level. I was not able to do this in my previous job.

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I would try to stay away from specific mention of wife and kids because those are no-no topics for interview evals.

I think the idea of being wanting more 'hands on' work is the best explanation. Not unreasonable to say that the groups you kept finding yourself working in were strategy related instead of your passion area (i.e. Coding and development) and that you were worried about getting pigeonholed into a career that wasn't for you. Should be followed up with a statement about how a holistic/strategic understanding has made you better at the technical stuff. Also gives you an opportunity to talk about the interesting work the company you're interviewing with is doing.

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In addition to the stuff others said make sure to have explanation how you spent your time productively if you have a substantial gap in employment from your last job. Good luck.

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Thanks for the tip... I'll be getting as many certifications as I can without access to any partner portal. 😊

My advice again: focus on what you look for, rather than talking about what you missed in the past. Can be easily done by rephrasing:
1) You traveled a lot in the past and look for an opportunity to give 100% during the day but still be in a permanent location and get the chance to see your spouse usually every day and bring your daughter to bed.
2 and 3) skip the „was not giving me“ part and change it to „consulting gave you the chance to see many different areas. As you have seen a lot, you know now that you want to get much more depth in that specific area and want to become a real expert in the field“. Also, the get your hands dirty part is good.

As said, don‘t explain why you left but explain why you are excited about the new challenge

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Thanks EY1. This is very helpful.

Did you get specific feedback on how your performance didn’t meet the mark? If not go get them, actually work on improving your weak points, and be honest in your next job interview about the fact that you got let go for certain shortcomings but you actually got feedback and worked on them.

Most of the projects I was staffed in roles implementing solutions about which I did not have any prior knowledge and then I was expected to showcase myself as an SME in front of the client.

One genuine feedback I am working upon is my communication skills when talking functional stuff. I'm very strong technically and can talk hours about it though.

Being an introvert did not help either. Not great in networking as well.

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