<prompt> Human: I was a contract employee working as the editor of a local news website and I just got fired after only 6 months on the job. Though the job had a very high turnover rate in the past, I was not expecting it at all and got very little severance pay 1 week. I am young 23, and Im afraid that getting fired from this job will hurt my chances for future employment. Fortunately I have a few connections to other local news sources and theres a major textbook publishing company in my city, but the uncertainty is freaking me out.Ive never been fired before and am still in shock. Right now Im trying to determine what to do in the immediate future. The only thing that immediately comes to mind is updating my resume. I took on a slew of monthly payments when I got this job, and was pretty much living paycheck-to-paycheck. I have about enough money for another month of living, and then I will have to start borrowing money from my parents. Fortunately they are well-off, but thats an absolute last resort for me. I want to find employment as soon as possible.I know I will have to discuss getting fired in future job interviews. To give an idea of what happened, my boss wanted me to solicit content for free from instagrammers and other popular social media user. As you can imagine, this was a total waste of time. I reached out to dozens of people, and only heard back from a few. No one ended up wanting to work for exposure. As a result of spending my time doing this, my core work suffered as a result. We had a series of heated meetings where I tried to explain I was spending my time soliciting content, but I ended up on the defensive, saying I would focus again on my core job requirements. Finally I was fired today by our VP of operations, without so much as a phone call from my boss, who was not in the office today. I was told I was meeting only the bare minimum requirements of 10-12 articles a day, and as a result I had to be let go.Im not really sure if Im to blame or if the company is going under. Especially towards the end there were many days when the office was almost completely empty. I was only making 26K a year for 50 hours a week of work, and the website analytics were up across the board by the time I left email blast open click rates, site readership, Facebook likes, etc.Having said that, Ive definitely grown as a writer during my time there in terms of speed, confidence, professionalism and hopefully taste. Maybe this is the sort of narrative I will want to tell in future job interviews to explain getting fired?Any advice on what to do next is welcome.Edit: Some commenters are suggesting I leave the experience off my resume altogether since it was only 6 months. Is this a good idea? I should probably have it on there at least for my next job interview, and then take it off after that, right?Edit 2: Thank you everyone for the great advice and encouragement! I will be revisiting this post throughout my job search. It has already proved to be insanely helpful.Assistant: Ok, lets talk your imediate future. How much do you have in the bank in easy to access cash? How long can that cover rent utilities food and car payment?2 NEVER EVER BLAME YOUR FORMER EMPLOYER. Even if they are douchebags, they become nice awesome people in an interview. If your firing does come up say what you learned from it.Human: Ive got 1,600 in the bank with about 700 of severance pay in two weeks. Its about two months of payments if I live very frugally. Hopefully I can find another job by then.And thank you for the interview advice. I think Ill be able to find a way to spin getting fired, given enough time. It will be challenging, though.  <response>: Am a recruiter. It was a contract position is all you need to say. No one will ask other questions. 