You can tell a lot about a company from just one job interview. Recently, people on Reddit shared the red flags in interviews that make them nope right out of there, and I was nodding right along the whole time. Here are some of the top responses:
1. "'Competitive salary.' No, just tell me the fucking salary."
2. "If the office is run down and not being taken care of. It indicates that the employees' comfort takes low priority."
3. "They say PTO is unlimited. This means they absolutely have zero work-life balance."
4. "'We like to hustle and not limit ourselves to regular office hours.' NO THANK YOU."
5. "When they’re always hiring for the same position!"
6. "When they expect you to treat a dead-end job like a career."
"I interviewed at a big box store once, a basic minimum wage retail stocker/cashier kinda thing. The guy asked me what my five-year plan with the company was."
7. "Ready to schedule your fifth interview?"
8. "If you sit down in the interview and it’s more like a sales pitch than looking into you, RUN."
9. "When they try to offer you a salary that's lower than what they posted. Like, the job ad says $50k-70k, but they try to offer you $40k."
"This happened to me in 2021 when I interviewed for a Project Manager role at my wife's company (albeit in a completely different division than her).
During the HR screen, I stated my requested salary was $95K, $10K over what I earned at the time. The HR person said that was no problem and passed me on to the next stage. I interviewed with the potential hiring manager and then had a two-hour panel interview with my potential colleagues.
Everything went well, and they extended me an offer. That offer was for $75K, $20K LESS than what I asked for and was agreed upon. This was also $10K LESS than what I earned at my job at the time. There was no way in hell I was willing to take a pay cut, especially since I didn't need to.
When pressed on the sudden decrease in salary, their HR gave me some nonsense excuse about 'band level equity' and 'unknown budgetary constraints.'"
10. "A lot, I mean A LOT, a lot of questions about handling interpersonal drama. Like, A LOOOOOOOOOTTTTTT. One or two, fine. Primary focus of the interview? There’s some shit going on there that is just not worth the stress."
11. "I arrived early for an interview and the secretary screamed, 'You're late,' upon seeing me when I was actually early (guess the other person bailed). Just shows you how you'll be treated going forward."
12. "When they ask if I have any questions for them, I ask, 'What do you like about working here?' If they take too long to answer or can't name anything, it's pretty much guaranteed I won't like working there."
"Agreed. I started making this a standard question, and I pay attention to how much they hesitate or how hard they have to think."
13. "They hire you on the spot or seem super eager to offer you the role within a 10-minute interview."
14. "If you have to pay money out of pocket for it, it's probably not a job. If you have to pay for 'training' or to cover the initial cost of something or other. It might be normal to pay for a uniform or something, but even that should be able to be deducted from your first paycheck."
15. "When the company won't let you give two weeks' notice to your previous employer."
16. "They won’t discuss salary or benefits."
17. "When the company benefits get worse every time you talk to someone. At a job fair, they told me 4 to 5 days of work from home is normal. At the first interview, they said I have to come in twice a week, but they have offices nearby that I can use. At the end of the second interview, I had to travel a couple of days every 6 months or so to a city far away."
18. "They reschedule a million times. Once or even twice, I get it. But there was a recent interview I did where it seemed like forever until they locked down a time."
19. "When they brag about how 'everyone just works through lunch,' run fast."
20. "Had an interview for a sales position the other day and they said they only hire women, because 'women are better at sales, am I right?' I’m a woman, but I don't care, fuck that sexism. Comes off creepy as hell."
"I'm as feminist as they come and find that extremely off-putting."
21. "During one of my interviews, as I was talking to the hiring manager, I could tell he’s a little sarcastic, power tripping, bitch. His assistant was sitting across from me, and he looked depressed, like he just wanted to quit on the spot. Sometimes the red flag is reading people's body language and how the boss enters the room."
"I had an interview like this a couple of years ago. I decided a few minutes into the interview that I didn’t want the job. The hiring manager bragged about how well written the job posting was and how it was impossible for me to have any questions about the job. He was incredibly offended when I asked questions about the job because the posting was, in fact, not well written and was very vague."
22. "Weird personality testing ahead of an interview."
23. "'We’re an established company, but the office is more like a startup,' means they're extremely unorganized with no process for anything, and no one knows who does what."
24. "When you ask about their break or shift meal policy, and their answer is, 'Oh, you take those when you can.' You aren't getting those breaks."
25. And finally, "'We're family here.' No, you leverage emotional blackmail to boost productivity and profits."
