I was let go at 5 months once due to them thinking I was shit. I prob was but so was their non existent ‘training’ for a trainee post. Anyway…I skipped it out on my cv. No one has ever said anything ,even though due to it being a small town, I knew people In the new office new something due to them being friends with some of the old work employees.
With regard to p45 thing, the financial year came to an end so I couldn’t use it anyway. Otherwise I was prepared to say Id lost it or something. I’d moved into the area recently so it was a plausible excuse. I signed on and was unemployed for about 1 month total. I was in the new job about 1 year before moving on and have been in current job almost 7 yrs now. I Don’t care if people know now as I’ve been there over 5 yrs and they won’t care as I only had to list 1 previous employer for reference. And they’d have a hard time filling my post as no one else wants the hassle I have to sort out 😂
During the firing ‘chat’, my old job actually did say they’d give me a reference but if pushed on specifics would say I was terrible at a “shitty boring poorly explained task”. However would say how lovely I was etc. I just didn’t trust them in the end to honour it so left them off the cv.
what I’d do in your situation is sign on with a temp agency/job then use them as your previous employer reference when a proper job you want comes along? Or just put on whatever you did before this current role, especially if in a different town or area. Honestly, at 3 months I don’t think a new employer would expect a reference. You could just say ‘end of contract/contract ended’ and if asked further something generic like it was not the role for you. If pressed further say after a discussion, we agreed to part ways in hope for a better fit, or it didn’t work out as planned.
I did read somewhere on a cv writing advice page, that if a job is 3 months or less, it’s acceptable to leave it off. Not sure if this universally true though.