7 Job Interview Red Flags

Run the other direction if companies do this in the job interview, these red flags are subtle at times, but could be the sign that saves you from accepting an offer at a company that will make you miserable. As a human resources leader and an award winning career coach who has landed thousands of people jobs, I am going to spill the behind the scenes of the seven red flags you need to look out for in the interview process. If a company exhibits several of these, watch out. You may not want to accept a job there, especially if it's a combination of number four, six and seven. If you're new here, this is self made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann. You may have seen me on abc, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and more. Subscribe for bleeding edge career and job search strategies. So I coach job seekers on how to become job shoppers. Essentially where you are in control of choosing your next adventure, not where you are wishing and hoping some company will give you. You need this mentality when looking out for red flags or else you start to let these red flags go. You convince yourself that it's probably fine and then you take the job offer where you are then in a miserable toxic environment for potentially years. Take for example my client Kyle, who joined my coaching program needing to land a product marketing role after getting his MBA and was so struggling to get the attention of employers. And he just wanted a job that would fund his Visa sponsorship. But with some coaching I turned him into a job shopper and started getting dozens of companies asking him to interview with them without him even applying, including Adobe and YouTube approaching him and he ultimately accepted an offer that was a 90% salary increase and $15,000 above the top of the company's range with also a Visa sponsorship. So I will link more about Kyle's story and coaching info below. But know that this is what is possible when you become a job shopper and you set your standards and allow companies to rise to them. Let's start with red flag number one. They use sarcasm to dodge important questions. There's a lot of people who proudly declare that they are fluent in sarcasm and that's great if that's your ch chosen form of comedy. But we all know that every joke is a half truth, so when these sarcastic remarks come up, you better believe there is more under the surface. For example, if you ask the question what are the high level strategic goals for the company? And your interviewer responds, oh yeah, I'd like to know that too. But actually we're mostly focused on yeah, I would call this a volcano response because there Are some dynamics brewing under the surface and quick reminder to also not use sarcasm in the interview. I cannot emphasize enough how awkward this can make things Red flag Number two they don't ask many questions in the interview. Now this can be a very good sign or a very bad sign depending on the context. So lean in Starfish. This is actually a good sign in some cases, such as when I was interviewing for a head of HR role at a tech company, I interviewed with the CEO and department heads and every interview they essentially asked me two questions. Tell me about yourself and what questions do you have for me? I may be entitled to compensation with how much I was carrying these interviews. Fortunately, I am a question machine and I tend to interview companies about as much as they interview me and I'll link a video of questions to ask in the interview and the worksheet you can use to answer the question. Tell me about yourself. That is super popular and very helpful. I'll link that down below. But why was this not a red flag? Well, five of my former coworkers worked at that company and told the CEO hire Madeline, she's your man. If she can't do it, no one can. So like a good CEO, he valued the input of his employees and instructed all of my interviewers to sell me on the role. Now, when you are not asked many questions and the interviewer talks the whole time, it's typically because they are trying to get you interested in the role. Many of my clients experience this because I have an inbound job search strategy where where they get several inbound interviews a week of companies asking them to interview and them not needing to apply anywhere. And I'll link some of their stories because I don't want you to think that this process only works for the top of 1% of workers. No, it can work for all different professions, levels, whatnot. So when a recruiter comes to them and asks them to interview with the company, the recruiter may spend the first call getting that candidate excited about the role since the recruiter approached them instead of them opting in and applying. So this is normal and not an issue. When it is sketchy though, is when this selling you on the role happens so much and they really have no information about you after multiple interviews or they barely learn anything about you and then give you a job offer. They may have retention problems where they are trying to take anyone and everyone in this role. You'll likely get an offer without feeling like you really earned it and this could indicate they don't really care who you are they just need a but in a seat quickly and you're likely to leave that role soon after starting to I remember I was once targeted for a pyramid scheme and they spent the whole time telling me about all the money I could make and the cars I could buy and they didn't ask me anything about myself or even tell me the core tasks of the role are some of the reddest flags I've ever seen. Red flag number three the interviewer mentions anything negative about their co workers when an interviewer gives you information about a company, they are giving you the baby Advil dosage of the drama. It's highly diluted by the time it gets to you. Therefore, if they say cryptic things about their co workers like she's got a different work style than me, but we're figuring it out or something a bit bit more overt like that team doesn't seem to want to collaborate on it but we are really trying. Yeah, that drama likely goes much deeper. Remember, you can ask follow up questions. Don't allow them to simply be cryptic. Another option is to do informational interviews with current and former employees to discover more about the company. I'll link my informational interview guide that gives you the right questions to ask. Red Flag Number four High Turnover if the company seems to be churning through employees like a baby through diapers, that is a big old flag that this may not be the most pleasant and stable place to work. How can you figure out if the company has high turnover? You can take a peek at Glassdoor for company reviews. Now know that often the most unhappy people post on Glassdoor and most of the happy people never think to write a review. So anything you read on there is not total reality. You can ask why this role is open in the interview to get a bit more context, or do some informational interviews to get the inside scoop. Again, use the informational interview questions list I put below. Red flag number five Gotcha Questions Ah yes. There is nothing that brings me quicker to a boil than when I hear that one of my interviewers has been using Gotcha questions to test candidates. And as an HR leader and someone who has trained thousands of people in companies how to interview candidates, I have been on a crusade trying to eliminate these questions from every interviewer's lips. The questions haven't shown any predictive nature in a candidate's ability to do the job well, and they make candidates extremely uncomfortable. So what does a gotcha question sound like? Something like how many windows are there in San Francisco? If you're 1 inch tall trapped in a 12 inch tall blender. How would you get out? Or why are manhole covers round? Or some kind of other trivial riddle? When I ask interviewers what on earth possessed you to ask this question, they will say something like they want to see how that person thinks and problem solves. Okay, well if that's the case, then ask them to solve a problem related to the role or ask them to give an example of how they thought through a complex situation in the past. Nope, that would be too logical and take too much brain power to come up with a great question. Instead of they found some brain teaser question on the interwebs that helps them to feel superior in the interview and judge the candidate when that candidate does not get the answer that is so obvious to you, the person who read the answer already. Anyways, I feel like people who ask these questions are poorly trained and don't see the interview as this mutual vetting of both sides and instead have this impress me mentality not down Red Flag Number six Disorder in the Interview Process if every time you speak with someone at the company the job role seems to change, that's an indication of chaos. A big misconception is that when you interview for a job, the company understands what this job entails and what you will do. Nope. I've seen it all the time. Hiring managers will cut corners when it comes to writing job descriptions and the interview process and we'll instead put out a half baked job description and rely on their intuition and the interview process to guide them to the right person and ultimately land on the right combination of skills that will be good for the business. I just need to do a quick shout out to my HR and recruiter comrades right now because I know everyone likes to blame them, but recruiters are actually the ones who are constantly blamed begging hiring managers to follow best practices and to be better about setting clear standards in the interview process. But so many hiring managers resist because they hate hiring and they don't want to do the additional work. Which, funny enough, if they do that additional work on the front end, their hiring process would take weeks or even months less than if they did all this work as they go along or on the back end. So if they don't seem to be sure about what you'll do, you'll likely struggle to be successful in the role once you get in it. Red Flag Number seven Illegal Interview Questions let's talk about what is an illegal interview question, when is it not a red flag, when it is, and how to react. Asking an illegal question may not be a red flag per se, as most illegal interview questions are asked due to the interviewer being untrained. My friend, the odds that your interviewer is terrible at interviewing is super high. I talk about this in my free 5 day masterclass upgrade your career of how to still master the interview and land the job offer even when you don't have an effective interviewer, which is most of the time. I'll link that class below and if it's not running right now, be sure to get on the waitlist. So illegal interview questions within the US include asking if you have kids, if you're married, what's your religion, where are you from, your health, your race, sexual orientation, your age, and in some states they're not allowed to ask you about your previous salary. Sometimes these slip out as innocent small talk, like asking when you graduated or where your accent is from, which really shouldn't happen but is probably not. A big red flag. When it gets bad is when you can tell that they're fishing for inappropriate information, straight up asking you if you have kids or planning on having kids and is majorly crossing the line. Also, insisting on getting your previous salary numbers is sketchy as well, unless you are in a country where reporting previous compensation is commonplace. I'll link two videos. One is how to respond to inappropriate job interview questions and the other is how to answer the salary question in the interview elegantly without reporting past salary information. Both are linked below. Now what red flags would you add to this list? Be sure to a comment below like this video and subscribe to this channel. You've got this wifi high five.