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Watch Out for These Candidate Red Flags During an Interview

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No pressure. But if you hire the wrong person, it can cause you to lose clients, disrupt your teams, and slow production—to name a few things that can go wrong when you hire badly. Here are some candidate red flags to watch out for to increase your chances of finding the right fit.

Candidate Interview Warning Signs

If you have multiple people interviewing the candidate, it might be a good idea to ask the same question in different ways. That way you can check if the candidate’s response doesn’t seem accurate. It’s always a red flag if you can catch a job candidate overinflating their experience. Everyone seems to do that on their resume, but your job during the interview is to decipher what’s real and what’s false.

Another red flag is if the candidate refuses to admit a mistake. Everyone fails but it’s how you get back up that matters most to employers—or at least it should. Beware the candidate that can’t come up with an answer to, “Tell me about the worst mistake you ever made on the job.”

It’s okay to say you’re not being challenged. It’s another thing entirely to say you’re bored. If a candidate says they want to leave their current job because they’re bored with it, you have to question their intellectual curiosity and creativity. Most companies always have something else you can do to help out. There’s always something to learn. If you’re not challenged in the job, you may be able to go after a certification or you may take on a side project to assist another department. Boredom is sometimes just a lack of initiative.

Another red flag is the candidate who doesn’t ask questions about the job. Having a million questions about a job you’re about to step into is normal. Not having one question just isn’t. Could the candidate be so lazy they didn’t do their homework to research the company, and then come up with questions for interviewers? Could the candidate want out of their current role so badly that they just don’t care what the job will entail? Could the candidate lack the intellectual curiosity to come up with questions about the work at your company?

We hope the answer is no to all of these questions but it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Ask Questions

On the flip side, there are also those candidates who clearly aren’t prepared but ask off-the-cuff questions that you know interviewers have already answered. Asking questions for the sake of asking questions is just as bad as not asking any questions at all.

Finally, what about the candidate that is unprepared. There’s nothing like a candidate who is running late. Or, the candidate who fails to research the people they’re interviewing with. Or even the candidate that doesn’t realize it’s a Zoom call and comes on without a functioning camera.

Contact ADD STAFF Today!

At ADD STAFF we are well-versed in how to spot candidate red flags that could signal a big mistake in hiring just waiting to happen. That’s why employers trust us to not only find but to pre-screen candidates on their behalf. We work hard every day to find you top quality candidates, then prepare them to do their best with your hiring team. Talk with ADD STAFF. We can help you find the right fit.

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