Sadly, it is often recruitment practice to make the hapless candidate "explain" his or her retrenchment. Yet to shed/retrench numbers of staff is simply the uber-normal corporate response to loss of a key contract or account, or loss of profitability. In fact, The Australian today (13/12/13) on page 24 published the figures. "Almost 400,000 Australians become involuntarily redundant in a given year with barely a political whimper". ABS figures, I expect. So next time you are about to grill a candidate who was retrenched, don't. It's normal.