6 INTERVIEW RED FLAGS that candidates should look out for
Hi there, it's Laura!
Today I want to take some time to discuss some common interview red flags that every candidate should look out for. As job hopping has become more popular and interviewing has evolved, so have the red flags become more insidious and difficult to pick up on.
Interviewing is a two way street: the company is trying to find out about you and you are trying to find out about the company.
Before we get going I do want to offer some disclaimers:
Everything in this article is my opinion, and my opinion only.
I do mention one company that made the press but don’t go over to their socials or LinkedIn to spread hate.
This is not an exhaustive list, pay attention to what is going in the interview and trust your gut!
Questionable Interviewers
By far the fastest way to figure out that the company you're interviewing with is not a great one is by assessing the interviewers. It's generally agreed on that during the interviews, people put their best foot forward. So if you're waking into the room and your interviewers can't even hold it together for the 1h it takes to interview you, then you know you're in for a ride.
The lowest bar we can set for interviewers is that they don't show any discriminatory attitude. Really, the bar is on the floor at this point. Let me remind you that any sexist, racist, homophobic or any other discriminatory attitude should not be taken lightly. Especially when you're excited about the job you might be tempted to say that "It's just one bad apple." but this is not the case at all.
These people still work there and openly display their discriminatory attitude.
It's most definitely not a one off.
I want to add another, perhaps not so obvious sign you should look out for: if you're only talking to directors, VPs and the likes, when you're not at that level, I think it worth asking yourself why can't you speak to a peer? In my opinion this is a red flag and it's the company actively trying to hide the reality of the day to day from you. While leadership will try to project a good image, a frustrated on-the-ground employee might not hold back about the issues they face daily. Always ask to speak to peers!
2. Signs of Large Scale Problems
I think this is a difficult thing to try to estimate but you should try to do you best, in every interview, in order to determine if the company is facing any large scale problems. The reason is very simple, these are issues you won't be able to escape regardless of the department that you're joining. These issues are so overwhelming that they're simply going to impact every single person working there. For example, are there missing layers in the organisation that are impacting worker's productivity? Asking about the organisational setup can shed some light in this case.
I want to encourage you to not only ask to speak to your peers but also the stakeholders that you will be interacting with on a daily basis. For example, if you are a product manager you want to talk with your engineering counterparts in order to understand what frustrates them. Are they happy? Are they complaining that they can't do their job properly? This also indicates large scale issues that, while might not impact you directly, will have an impact on your work satisfaction and ease of getting things done.
3. Toxic Work Culture
This is one of those things that is sometimes difficult to estimate only from the interview but still, it's worth keeping an eye and ear out to these topics. My favorite way to try to flesh out the company's attitude towards their employees is to ask the following questions during the interview:
When someone drops the ball on a project, how does your team handle that?
What specific efforts have been made to create an inclusive culture for underrepresented employees?
When there is a conflict cross-functionally, how do folks resolve it?
How does the company ensure there is a sense of community even when people are working remotely?
Ambiguity when answering these questions indicates that the company hasn’t broached the important topics you’ve raised. Consider this a red flag!
4. Unexplained Changes
In current time, the interview process might take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. However, over the course of this period, if there are inexplicable changes to the job you applied to, this is a major red flag. Unfortunately I have to say I have gone through this myself so I can actually give you an example of what I mean. This happened at the time I wanted to leave Amazon and move to Amsterdam. I applied to a Product Manager position in Amsterdam with a local company, that advertised: a full time position and after the first conversation, indicated a salary in the 80k EUR range. All this seemed well with me and I went ahead with the interviews. After I went through the whole process ended, they actually informed me that the position was a 7 month contract with the possibility of renewal and that the salary is actually in the 50k EUR range.
What an unpleasant shock!
If I had known these parameters from the beginning I wouldn't have interviewed with the company. This was ultimately a waste of both our times.
Don't get me wrong, changes aren't always a red flag. For example, if after the interview the recruiter tells you that they are interested in hiring you at a more junior level, along with changes in role, responsibilities and salary, this means that you didn't interview as well as you thought. Also, this indicates that the recruiter and hiring manager are doing their job to make sure they're setting you up for success.
However, if nothing but the salary changes or the type of contract, RUN!
5. Free Work Required
It's sad that this is still happening but I feel like I have to include this in the list: free work being required as part of the interview! This is a total red flag and we can use a now infamous example of Revolut, the payments/banking company! In an article published by the Wired, they interviewed a woman that explained how the company required candidates to get customers to sign up even before being offered the position. The author used "Laura" as a fake name for this woman, which I think is a funny coincidence. Below an excerpt of the article:
Laura (not her real name) wasn't aware of these problems when she applied to be a Spanish business development manager, last year. She loved the product – an app and card that provided zero-fee international money transfers, the ability to use digital currency bitcoin, as well as other services – and was excited at the prospect of working for the company.
She did a 30-minute job interview over Google Hangouts with the London-based head of business development, Andrius Biceika, and was immediately told she had passed to the next round, which would involve a small test. “The surprise came when I received the task and it asked me to get the company as many clients as possible, with each one depositing €10 into the app,” says Laura.
The instructions on the exercise said the applicants should recruit at least 200 clients in a week to have a chance at passing to the next interview phase. The task’s description didn’t guarantee that reaching the target would automatically qualify applicants for a job, but did advise them on a number of ways they could get clients, such as sharing a “promo code” with their friends, sharing it on social media, and posting promotional flyers on university campuses.
After Laura wrote back refusing to do the task and saying she was disappointed that the company would “take advantage of someone that is looking for a job”, Biceika emailed her saying she was the only candidate out of over 350 that had complained about the task. “Apologies you're not up to show what you're capable of,” he wrote in the email.
While you might be thinking that this might not be too bad, I think it really goes to prove what kind of company you're dealing with. At the beginning of the pandemic, the company actually let go of their employees in somewhat questionable circumstances. So don't ignore the red flags you see in interviews. If they're showing in the interview, it means the troubles are real!
6. The Right Reasons
This I think is one of the most insidious red flags out there, that I unfortunately also experienced as well. It's usually when the company is either asking or questioning if you're applying to the job "for the right reasons".
Listen, if you're applying to work at an orphanage, to save the ice cap, to save baby pandas, please apply with the right reasons at heart. This probably means that you won't make that much money but hey, you're it it for your heart's content. However, if you're applying to a cold, hard, corporate, capitalist type of job, what do the right reasons look like? What are you as a candidate expected to do in order to prove that you are there for the right reasons? Take a job below your experience? Accept a salary below the market or below your current salary? The "right reasons" are a fluffy reason that can and will be used against you at later stages of the interview and it’s very difficult to fight against it.
As you can see this is a slippery slope to get taken advantage of, all in the name of the right reasons.
This is at the same level of toxicity as "We're a family here".
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that motivation and enthusiasm is something that is built, not something that is an intrinsic quality of a candidate. These are built and maintained through good benefits, good work life balance, good career progression opportunities. Don't let companies try to convince you that you're in the wrong for wanting these things! Additionally, a good mission won’t keep employees going if the inner working of the company is not set up properly and if the company isn't helping employees success.
What are some red flags that you noticed in your interviews? Let me know in the comments below!
That’s it for today, folks!
Until next time, this is Laura signing off.
