Have you ever been in a job interview where you needed to balance that queasy feeling in your stomach? I’m not speaking about the one from your nerves. I mean the sudden dizziness induced by your excessive eyebrow raising as you continually thought that question was odd.
Oftentimes, job candidates overlook an employer’s imperfections simply because they feel they need the job. Save yourself the wasted time, heartbreak, and need to launch your job search (again) sooner than you’d like.
Here are ten telltale signs you should never overlook on your job interview:
Late and disorganized is no way to go through life…
The interviewer is late. They can’t even show up on time for your first date? Get use to it if you take the job. It’s likely acceptable in their culture. It’ll get worse before it never gets better.
The interviewer informed you she just found out she needed to interview you and hasn’t reviewed your resume. It’s even worse if she appears to have never seen your resume. The first shows disorganization and the second shows deception. Pick your poison. Both will kill you.
The interviewer asks what position you are interviewing for. See previous.
Let’s play don’t ask don’t tell…
The interviewer will not share why the position is open. The company likely will fire someone as soon as you accept (if it hasn’t already). Get ready to be on the hot seat. She might respond, “We’re growing!” Pause before you ask how many people the company has recently hired or plans on hiring. First, ask what the employee turnover has been for this position. Just because three new people joined recently doesn’t mean three others didn’t make a break for or were shown the door.
Being a boss should require a license…
They won’t let you interview with your immediate supervisor. He or she is too busy? Based on my company milewalk’s statistics from job candidates we interview, four out of five either quit or are open to leaving because of their boss. You didn’t need to make it past third grade fractions to know this smells fishy.
You don’t like your immediate boss during the interview process. See previous. It won’t get better.
We should hire really smart people that can answer irrelevant questions…
The company isn’t smart enough to know which questions to ask you so instead wastes time discussing ridiculous, never-to-exist scenarios.Yes, Mr. Interviewer, I can, in fact, figure out how many gas stations there are in the world or whether it’s faster to fly around the world heading west in a Boeing 737 or east in a Boeing 767. Nothing good ever came of careers that spawned from these types of job interviewers. This company will see to it.
Eh, we can just figure that out as we go…
The interviewer cannot clearly articulate “successful performance” for the position. If the company doesn’t know it now, it won’t know it in the future. If it doesn’t know what to expect, you’ll never know what’s expected of you. I hope you’re good at guessing games. Get ready to lather. Rinse. Repeat. A. Lot.
We really are nothing more than a bunch of great adapters…
The interviewer’s description of the company sounds nothing like you. Your alignment to the corporate culture is the single greatest indicator of (employee) retention success. You can fit in and be happy or constantly need to adjust and be miserable. Choose.
They must be a really focused bunch…
As you walk through the halls, you notice no one is smiling. They must just be really busy.
I’d love to hear from you: Got any job interviewing doozies?
If you enjoyed this article, you can find other wonderful tips and tricks related to life and work via my blog an the usual social spots at LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
As always, I give away a complimentary Interview Intervention eBook if you sign up for the milewalk newsletter on the front page of the milewalk Website!
In other exciting news, The Hiring Prophecies: Psychology behind Recruiting Successful Employees is now for sale!
I don’t know why this post just came up on my LinkedIn feed, but even though it’s several months old, I have to post a comment.
Several years ago, I took a job with a firm even though there were several red flags during the interview process: They flew me from Chicago to Dallas for the interview, but asked me to cover my rental car, hotel, and meals and then send the receipts for reimbursement. When I showed up for the interview, the hiring manager had not bothered to set up time for me to talk with anyone. So, I sat there for an hour while they scrambled to line people up. Needless to say, none of the people I talked to was prepared to have an intelligent discussion about the position. I went to lunch with the hiring manager who was very detached and impersonal. We struggled to have any kind of conversation and the lunch seemed to last for hours.
Despite all these warning signs, I accepted their offer. Big mistake. Working there was even worse than the interview process. Plus, and there’s no other word for it, the hiring manager flat out lied about key aspects of the position. Within one month I was looking for another job and luckily found something else two weeks later.
It was, however, a good learning experience. Last year, I was looking for a new position and had an interview with a Fortune 50 company which had a regional office near my home. I was very excited about it.
The first and second interviews went very well, but then things went silent. A month passed. I got an e-mail from the hiring manager saying the process “is continuing, but not as quickly as we’d like”. Another month passed and I got another e-mail “we are still moving, albeit slowly”. Another month, another “progressing slowly” email.
Then, not a word for FOUR MONTHS until I got a call from their recruiter saying they are ready to move forward with the position but that I needed to start over. “What do you mean ‘start over'”, I asked. They meant I needed to start the interview process all over again, with the same hiring manager and team, as if I had not talked to any of them before.
At that point, I told them I was no longer interested in the position. If they were that screwed up during the hiring process, I could only imagine what a nightmare it would be to work there!
Richard, so glad you came across it and thanks for the comments!! We try to sprinkle in newer posts and older, popular posts because people don’t always see them the first time. Glad this one found you!