We've had dating red flags, how about JOB red flags?

[uniglowooljumper]

The two worst jobs I ever had, I should never have taken up after the interview.

In both interviews, it was very clear that the supervisors/bosses did not want the person whose job I was interviewing for to go. In both second interviews, the person who held the position was there and in both cases the person was promoted.

There was lots of talk about how the boss/team hated to see 'Susan' or 'Wendy' go, how super Susan and Wendy were, staff would say things like 'You have big shoes to fill' and there was constant comparisons to Susan and Wendy.

I ended up quitting both after a month or two.

Now, any interview like this is the dating equivalent of talking about exes or saying your ex was psycho. I don't go any further.

Do you have any job red flags that make you nope out immediately?

Phew! glad it isn’t just me who fell for that one 😔 very common in Cornwall for marketing / design (usually it’s a marketing job that includes graphic design) jobs including quite well paid ones...

Mine are school specific but:

• all female SLT in very fitted clothes and heels. Shows that they don’t teach any form of proper timetable and are always the ones with lots of time consuming ‘ideas’ and policies.
• awful staff toilets (as another PP said, you can tell a lot about how staff are treated by the toilets).
• no other candidates. School has high turnover / poor reputation.
• no specific job description for TLRs and low pay. Always mean that they expect the world from you, all for the equivalent of a cheap take away a month.
• staff gossiping in the staff room - always seems to show an unhappy environment.

@LuluLala2

Definitely what you said in the op, additionally:

• job descriptions with any variation on 'any other duties as and when asked by boss'. Totally unfair and should be illegal.
• high staff turnover

We have that into our job description because we don't want someone saying to us that's not my job - when they are asked to photocopy something - clearly we wouldn't be paying someone £60k+ a year to photocopy but sometimes it needs to be done - we all muck in and do whatever is required to get the job done - that's the attitude the whole team has - including the boss! So if someone doesn't want to muck in - we'd rather they just avoided us completely than took the job and said "that's not fair" when ever they were asked to do something.

@Pericombobulations

I have had a couple.

Had relocated and desperately needed a job. Went for my only offered interview, place seemed nice enough, boss seemed ok. Then I met the lady I was working with. I should have had alarm bells ringing when she told me the boss swore a lot. Didnt bother me, so I took the job. Found out that when he swore it was normally at his admin staff, and was a bullying boss at best. I was employed to help the lady I met on interview day, found out whilst working there, boss hadnt wanted to employ anyone extra and thought she should do it all. I cried every night. Then a day before my probation was up, I found a letter on the printer, dated the next day basically saying they were letting me go. I still went in the next day to get my letter and they still made me work until 5pm to get every penny's work out of me. Just checked them on Glassdoor, and other people have commented not positively about them still, 15 years later.

I had an interview where the job description said half days. It was only when I was offered the job that it became clear that the job was 1-5pm every day, not very good for a working mum of a 4 year old. Declined that job.

Took a job with a local opticians. lovely firm, and lovely people, I still go there now. My only problem was that I was paid hourly from 9am - 5.30pm with an hour for lunch. Once I started I was told I must be there at 8.45am, and we were all expected to clean the shop afterwards at 5.30pm but couldnt start until the last customer left. I was frequently getting home after 6.30pm but they refused to pay extra for those hours worked. I only stayed in that job 6 months.

Have to say at my current workplace, lovely with a good boss, but when we interviewing for a new co-worker as the previous very nasty person was leaving. We had to interview in the second of our two work places, to avoid the nasty person meeting the candidates and sticking the knife in before they left. Luckily they didnt, and new person is lovely by comparison! So sometimes there is a reason why not all the places are shown on interview day. It does also annoy me when a coworker slags the boss off, as havent been in the job market for many years and wouldnt know what a mean and nasty boss is really like to work for.

@pericombobulations What's so bad about a job advertising as half days if it's 1-5? Or do you just mean you realised the job wasnt for you?

I don’t agree with ‘bad Glassdoor reviews’ usually people only post negatives and you eill never know if they were the problem and it’s a revenge post.

@hellofromcornwall

Has anyone ever done that thing where the employers ask you to complete a project based on a brief? You submit the work and then they’ll shortlist you if you’re good enough...

I have. Didn’t get the job but they used my design and marketing ideas that I put together. I was really pissed off when my blog appeared on their website! Also, an idea I had has now been implemented and turned into a product that they sell.

They didn’t employ anyone. So they must have received quite a lot of free design and marketing ideas from all the applicants.

Swines.

It can also end well. A friend was asked to write a strategy for an interview and then was hired to implement it. But even before her interview we were joking they would steal her idea and get a cheaper candidate to implement it. Fortunately they didn't but it is common.

When they say that they want to pay you in cash

High staff turnover

When they say "it's a small family run business". It's most likely that you end up with a lazy son, daughter, wife, .... that just assume that you do your job as well as theirs!

@PlausibleSuit

Big one for me: when the interviewer is late really late to the interview.

I went for an interview once where my prospective boss was almost 45 minutes late for our arranged meeting time. No apology when she finally turned up either. Just a lot of 'it's mad 'ere' mugging. (This was an interview for a relatively senior role, a department head.)

For me, being that late to an interview speaks to a significant lack of consideration and respect of other people's time and effort. Which, oddly enough, was something deeply ingrained within that company culture, as I discovered when I worked there.

I should have left after 10 or 15 minutes or being kept waiting. And I certainly shouldn't have accepted the job.

In my current job, one of the panel was over an hour and a half late. she was a consultant surgeon though and had been called to theatre for an emergency.

Four years down the line, I don’t regret accepting the job.

@FTMF30 It was a job share, and I asked during the interview if it would be flexible times, and they assured me it was. It was only when I returned to discuss the job offer etc that they informed me it wasnt flexible as the person doing the morning didnt want to swap any shifts thus allowing for some flexibility. It was afternoons or nothing. If that had been made clear in the advert or even the interview I would have declined earlier. That they led me to believe I could do at least some mornings was a lie. I wasted my and their time by their lack of up front honesty.

Back in the very late 1980s, I went for an interview with a games company that was related to Maxwell Communications. They wanted to know how I would cope with temperamental directors, including Robert and Kevin Maxwell bit told me the splendid pension scheme would make it all worth it.

I thought it over on my walk back the bus stop and called the agency to withdraw, it did not feel right. Several years later I was rather glad I did as the Maxwell empire unravelled.

When the building doesn't match what is on their website..

When they tell you the below:

1. it's a new role, so make it your own (no structure and expect you to be a mind reader)
2. issues with senior management and the last person who did your role. I've had this twice now and it was an absolute shit show, so awkward coming in to an environment were the person before you was sacked.
3. job shares, the person who you share with has been there longer and expects you to pick up the slack. They normally do the beginning of the week and expect you to move mountains for the remainder of the week.
4. pre covid may I mention, wfh or flexi working jobs that have a problem with you wfh - wtf are you 7 and need babysitting?
5. female bosses in my experience are borderline psychopaths. I have turned down jobs when I've been told my LM is a woman.

4 stage interviews meeting everyone and their grandmother in the company. Arghhhh

@Pericombobulations Ahh fair enough. That is rubbish.

I had an interview for a support worker at a supported living home. I had not heard of the firm which is unusual in care work. The guy doing the interview was over an hour late and I was sat twiddling my thumbs getting cross. Normally I would have just left ages before but wanted to see what he was like interviewing and it was pretty poor. I was gutted he never called to offer me the job so that I could turn it down. It took them three months to tell me I had not got it though 🙄

I have two red flags in jobs, one I acted on, one I didn't and it was awful!

I went for a job and the company was around 10 people working for a husband and wife - who argued! The woman had a very fiery temper, she was snippy in the interview, she spoke over her husband. I needed the job and took it - but I was so glad to leave. She fired me several times (due to her bad temper, not my bad work) and her husband would call and get me bad. Was very glad to leave!

The second one the guy who interviewed me who would have been my boss spoke so rudely to the receptionist/secretary about a lunch she was asked to organise. They offered the job, I didn't take it!

Based on the comments of bad interviews. These would fall under the bad category , but they both turned into excellent jobs.

1. I’ve had one manager who forgot the interview was even happening. He wasn’t even in the office, he had gone out, so after the assistant called him, she asked me to come back later . Got the job and it was a great company and he was a great boss. He genuinely just forgot. Worked there for about 4 years.

1. Also had an interviewer ask if I have kids/husband etc. Probably was illegal, but the job requires me to be in at 5am occasionally and he needed to check If Childcare was an issue. I still got the job (I have a child) and again he’s a great guy to work for. Been there 2 years now and I love it. It’s amazing how many people apply but don’t consider childcare issues and how they would manage to get into work for an early start.

I did have what I thought was an interview turned out to be a ‘chat’ with the agency.... who never contacted me again. Massive fucking waste of my time, especially when I had to drive for 40
Mins each way and pay for parking in city centre. Arseholes! I’ve also had to attend an induction interview which was about 3 hours away, the job I applied for didn’t even exist, the company (Pareto law) said they would add me to the books, whilst continuing to ask if I would be happy to locate 4 hours away for what was essentially a job in a call centre on 18k. (They were specifically advertising graduate roles and only wanted fresh uni graduates) utter twats!

I had an interview for a new not-yet-opened coffee shop when I was 17. I went to college full-time so I was only looking for weekend work and some days during the school holidays. The boss asked how flexible I was with college. I said I wasn't... I had to go to college. I got the job and on the day the coffee shop opened, I was on the rota to work. They expected me to skip college and weren't pleased when I said I couldn't come in. This became a regular thing, as well as shift changes last minute and shifts all through the school holidays, including double-shifts so I had no time to actually study. I quit after 8 months. The last straw was our new manager who had us cleaning the edges of the floor with a toothbrush.

I had a phone interview with potential manager and HR which went well. But this was Monday, and the interviewer was relocating to the US on the Friday and wanted to see me again in person that week. Except I had the annual team-wide videoconference booked Tues-Fri which meant staying in a hotel somewhere with the rest of the UK team. He asked me to call in sick for the day of my interview and drive to his office to be interviewed. In front of his HR manager. I didn't know whether it was a test or not but I had to say no Surely you wouldn't want to employ someone who was known to lie, bunk off and muck up a once a year department event?

@DisgraceToTheYChromosome

In HGV driving, there isn't really an interview. The true test is the assessment. When an assessor says, "we'll soon beat those bad habits out of you", and in returning to base swears at another driver...run like fuck.

I guess you've had to do that at some time?

On my first day in a new job I wasn't met in reception as agreed in the offer letter. I waited and waited and turns out my new LM was in a meeting where I was introduced but I wasn't present as I was waiting in reception!

I should have quit there and then. I rarely saw the LM and it is the only job I have left with under 2 years' service.

@NewnameNelly did you just say you don't think women should be in management positions?!
My red flags have included a panel interview where one person was scrolling their phone. Another where the panel swapped injokes between themselves. One where they just didn't ask any questions relevant to the role or my skills.

I got offered a job once, asked if they could possibly put the offer in writing but they guy said no, he doesn't work like that and he won't let me use him to get a pay rise out of my then current boss - thought it was standard to get it in writing. I stupidlyignired my gut, took the job and regretted it every day for the whole time l worked there. Especially the day his partner phoned me to say he had been arrested for beating her up and was in police custody. Last l heard he was in prison. Vile bully of a man who went through my bag once and found a letter l had for another job interview. Thank god l got that other job so was able to walk out.