10 Things to NOT Say in a Job Interview

What should you never say in a job interview? We are going to go over the top 10 things to not say. I'm Madeline Mann, creator of Self Made Millennial, and I'm joined today by Jonathan Javier, the CEO of Juan Salting. Here's how this is going to work. We both wrote down five things that people have said to us in job interviews that weren't so good. And also, we both have many clients who we help. These are the things that they get tripped up on. So we're going to compare notes, and you're going to learn exactly what not to say. And if you're new, Madeline Mann. I'm a human resources and job search strategist. You may see me in these places. New videos on Thursdays. All right, let's dive in. Okay, Jonathan, I'm gonna let you go first.

All right, let's see it. A little scared to say these, but. Oh, hopefully none of you are doing these. So I got the first one talking only about compensation.

Yes. This one can get you in trouble.

Yes, definitely. And I've seen a lot of different clients usually having the conversation only about compensation. They're like, how much am I getting paid? Like, this is my range. Like, can you meet that? Of course. You want to center it around what your skills and experience are so you can showcase that you're a great candidate.

Exactly. I think that discussing compensation is, of course, an important conversation. The issue is when it's the first call, right. You're hopping on the call. You just are meeting this recruiter and you are just kind of learning about the role. It is a little bit of a double standard, though. I feel like recruiters are allowed to ask right off the bat what your conversation is, but it reflects poorly on the candidate if immediately, like, how much do you pay? But the good news is, is I do think that if you wait till later round interviews to talk about money, you actually have more negotiation power. So this is just a good tip all around.

And everybody know this. You don't always have to disclose your compensation that you've made in your previous or current roles. Always remember that.

All right, shall I go next?

All right, let's do it.

I want this job because I want to work remotely and have a flexible schedule.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I've actually. I've had this experience with a candidate once. He was like, yeah, you know, I really like this role of consulting because I don't have to go in the office. Because you don't have one.

Yes. Those benefits, any benefit that a company Gives you. Of course that's going to play into whether or not you're going to take that role. But making that the primary reason why you want to work there, having a remote work situation and flexible schedule, is you can find a hundred million jobs that will offer you that. So a company's looking for something a little bit deeper. What do you like about the company? The product, the team, the role? How does the role play to your skills? So just dive a little bit deeper versus what are the benefits the company's offering?

And you can see the benefits usually on different platforms, whether it's Glassdoor, other sites and those sometimes even have it in the job description that it is a hybrid or remote role.

Exactly. All right, cool. Second one.

What's your second one? All right. It's babbling or talking too long.

I would say this is the number one reason why so many hiring managers say no to candidates.

Oh, my gosh. Yes, I totally agree with this. And what happens is a lot of people will just go off tangent on a topic and they'll just be talking like this and hello, hello, how's it going? You know, and I did this. You can't even understand it. Right. Be sure to utilize different methods, whether it's car or star format. Car being context, action, result, star being situation, task, action, result. We personally like cars, so utilize that to put the context of what's occurring in the background, the action steps that you took for that context and then what resulted from it in that result. You want to showcase the impact that you made in that role.

Absolutely. If you are unfamiliar with Car Star or you want deeper training on that, I will link a video below on behavioral interviewing that will walk you through the entire thing and will help you to answer these questions really well.

All right, Madeline, let's go with the next one.

Okay. My second one is badmouthing a former employer.

Definitely don't do this. And you don't want that negative energy, especially going into that interview and that person who's on the other side being like, are they going to badmouth us when they work for us?

Okay, that's it. Have you ever had a toxic employer or bad work situation? Yes. It happens to all of us. So it's not necessarily reflecting bad on you that you've had bad situations. The issue is when you kind of have this, this reactionary, potentially just negative view of it and the company thinks exactly as Jonathan said, are they going to just bad talk about things? Instead, you want to focus on your learnings from that situation, showing empathy Acknowledging maybe sometimes when it wasn't perfect, but really learning that, yeah, I learned a lot at that company. I ended up reaching a ceiling in my growth. And so now I'm looking at amazing companies like yours that are on a global scale instead of a local scale, which makes me so excited.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. You know, there's always an interview question regarding situations like this. For example, I remember my past interviews. They would always ask me a lot of time when I worked with someone and I didn't agree with them. So you can definitely utilize what Madeline said during your interview so you can crush it.

Okay, I want to hear your third one.

All right. So the third one is focusing on things you don't have.

Yes, absolutely. Just being too much in the. I don't have that. I don't have that. And not focusing on the amazing value you can add.

Definitely agree with that. And what happens a lot is when you're asked a question during interview, you're like, oh, I don't have that skill. And that's it. But what you can do instead is you can say that you are improving on that skill by learning something, whether it's taking a course, whether it's working on a project, whether it's working on it. In your past experiences, you want to showcase that you are learning that skill so you can show that you are a great candidate.

I think that a lot of times companies don't hire people who have 100% of the qualifications, and that's a life hack. When you realize that's the case, it really opens up so many more opportunities. So walking into an interview and having a growth mindset saying, yeah, I don't. Maybe don't have that skill in full, but here's my plan to make it happen. And here's how I've built skills in the past quickly and proactively on my own.

And I was going to say to focus on what you have rather than what you don't have. Yes, There is a reason why you got an interview. If you weren't qualified or if you weren't good enough, you wouldn't have got an interview. So always remember to focus on the things you have rather than the things you don't.

They believe in you. Now you need to believe in you. Okay, I'm going to go for my next one. Let's see what you have to say about this one.

Okay, let's see it.

I want to start my own business.

Totally agree with this. And the reason why I say, I mean, I started my Own business.

Me too.

Right. When I was working in corporate, so didn't really focus mainly on the business because they're going to think that, oh, why is this person trying to get a job in my company? Like, don't they have their own.

They're just going to leave. Right. They're just biding their time until they get out. So we both ended up leaving our full time jobs to be business owners. Not once did I talk about, well, my aspirations, you know, where do I see myself in five years being a business owner? No, it's showing that your path is not at the company long term. Now, the company isn't naive. Right. They're not thinking that you're going to be there for the next 40 years like it used to be. But it, it really does show your priorities are elsewhere.

Yeah, I definitely agree. And you know, when you have those different companies that you have as side hustles, you could definitely include that on your resume. But don't make that the main focus and be like, oh, I'm going to do this in the next five years because a company will know that you're going to probably leave.

Exactly.

Always keep that in mind.

Give us your next one.

This one. This one, this one saying you don't know the answer to a question. Oof.

Now this is so tough, right? Because you will be thrown curveballs in the interview and just straight up saying, I don't know. It's definitely not a good look.

Yeah. And everybody, I would say like you can actually find out what your questions are before your interview. And how you do this is there's two ways. Number one, you can go reach out to the recruiter you're working with and be like, hey, I'm preparing for my interview. What questions would you prepare for that I could basically see? And what happens is sometimes the recruiter will actually give you the questions. The second part is you can actually make the job descriptions into tell me about a time questions. So for example, if one of the bullets says collaborate with multiple teams, you just put tell me about a time in the beginning. And that's a question. Tell me about a time when you collaborate with multiple teams. You can then guess a lot of those questions. So you won't be in that situation where you're like, I don't know the answer.

The job description is gold. Often the recruiters will help you. Sometimes they won't. Sometimes they will because the goal is not to hire the person who is best at interviewing. The goal is to hire the person who's going to be best at the job. So giving you some ideas of what the interview will be about only benefits the company because they want to get the best possible information from you. So really being proactive and asking that question also makes you look as an even better candidate. Shall I do my next one? Okay. No, no, no.

Okay.

Okay. So this is the next one. Which role is this for everybody?

Always remember to know what you are interviewing for and make sure to do research on that position. One thing you can do is reach out to people who are currently in that role at the company before you even apply to it. So you can know exactly what the role entails and you can bring that to your interview.

Yes, Jonathan, I have interviewed thousands of people at this point. Working in hr. You really, you do your la. I would get this question all the time. I could often predict when I was going to get this question because these people typically had resumes that weren't very tailored to the position. They typically didn't write a cover letter, but I gave them the interview anyways because they checked off certain boxes. But yet it was so interesting to see that they barely knew anything about the company. They weren't passionate about it at all. And so it's so important to take the time to have what I call a low volume job search. This is what I teach in my coaching programs is I don't have my clients apply to hundreds of jobs. I actually have them focus on the exact right jobs and companies that are great for them and go deeper and it actually takes a lot less time. So if you're interested in learning more about that, I will link some more information down in the comments and in the description.

Remember to do your research. Utilize those platforms, Whether it's Glassdoor, LinkedIn, reach out to people in those roles so you can know what it's about.

Okay, give us your last, last one.

Okay. So you know there's questions at the end when people say they don't have any questions to ask.

I hear all the feedb from all these hiring managers and one of the top things that they would say to me that was good about a candidate is they go, oh, that candidate asked great questions. And if they didn't ask any questions, that was a bad thing.

Totally agree with that. And everybody, you should always have at least two to three questions to ask at the end. What I like to say, one of my favorite questions is asking about the other person's story because what could happen is you might have the same story as them. Maybe you come from a first generation background and maybe they do too. You can utilize that for your interview follow up and you can actually put that into your paragraph when you're sending them that email. So for example, for me, when I was interviewing at LinkedIn before, one of the people I was interviewing with love Malcolm Gladwell, which was actually my favorite author and I mentioned that in my paragraph and she responded and was like, hey, I love that you were actively listening during the interview, like thank you so much. And I think that really played a big part for me. Moving on to the next round.

Absolutely. I feel like the bookends of your interview are so important. The questions you ask throughout and also at the end and then at the beginning, making sure that you have it locked in your answer to tell me about yourself. I have incredible work that you all have told me you absolutely love. It's landed so many people amazing jobs. So I will link that in the comments and description. It gives you the exact three step formula to write your own answer to tell me about yourself. Last one. Are you ready for it?

Let's do it. Let's do it.

Expressing interest in other roles I had.

A situation where I was actually interviewing someone for a web development position, but the person kept talking about they were interested in marketing. The reason why you got that interview in is for that specific position. So always remember to center your focus around that.

It reminds me of what we were talking about earlier about wanting to be an entrepreneur or these other things is you appear like a flight risk essentially that you are going to take this position for the meantime until you can actually get into the role you actually want. So I'm going to take this design position until I can get into marketing. That's not what a company wants to hear because they're going to spend a lot of money and a lot of time training you in this new role and they don't want you to within six months be toe tapping to say when can I move on to the next department? So be very intentional to make sure that you are focused in the job interview. Those are the top 10 things you should not say in a job interview. Jonathan, where can we find you?

Of course. Well again thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Definitely connect on TikTok, which is Juan Solting. My Instagram is Jonathan Words of wisdom and then we have a YouTube too, which is Juan Solting and then LinkedIn. Jonathan Javier and our website is onesulting.com.

If you like this video, be sure to to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to this channel. You've got this wifi high five.