People Who Conduct Job Interviews Share Red Flags They Look Out For

Job interviews are understandably nerve-wracking for most people, and we strive to make the best first impression we can while also hoping that we will stand out among the other candidates.

But there are some behaviors and personalities presented during job interviews that read as red flags and might immediately eliminate any chance of being hired.

Taking notes, Redditor makethatnoise asked:

"People who give job interviews, what are some subtle red flags that say, 'This person won't be a good hire'?"

A Restraining Order

"I once interviewed someone who told me she technically wasn't allowed to be in the building because someone on another floor had a restraining order against her."

- Silent_Radish_3841

"Yeah, that's creepy and intense... but even if she seemed perfect in every other way, I wouldn't hire her just because... logistics? What if she needed to go to another floor to drop or pick something up?!"

- TheBookishAndTheBard

Not The Answer They Were Looking For

"I was hiring someone with web development skills. I asked a candidate to tell me about a time they encountered a critical error and how they fixed it."

"Their response was, 'Well, I was on our website and noticed some information was out of date, a critical error, so I told the web development team we needed to update that critical error.'"

- miss_zee

Education History "In Progress"

"I had a perfectly nice woman come in for an interview. She lied about her education."

"I knew because the diploma mill she listed quite famously doesn't exist anymore, but she said she was a current student set to graduate in two years."

"Honestly, if she hadn't lied, we would have hired her. But once I pointed that out in the post-game meeting, everyone lost any enthusiasm they had."

- Mamapalooza

"I had a friend who had a school listed he had been attending for 25 years. He always listed it as 'in progress' as if he's about to graduate. No one ever questioned it."

"Then one day an interviewer said, 'That school you have listed where your degree is in progress, it closed 18 years ago. Why do you still have that on your resume as being in progress?'"

"He said he told the guy, 'I was planning on continuing my study there, I didn't know it closed.'"

"Needless to say, he didn't get hired for that job, but he finally took that school off of his resume after who knows how long."

- Adorable-Writing3617

Information Regurgitation Instead Of Application

"When asked about their experience with a topic, they stick to reciting textbook definitions of terminology rather than demonstrating any understanding of how to apply it."

"I had one person who was literally forwarding our questions into ChatGPT, and then reciting rambling answers that provided definitions of keywords in our questions rather than actually answering the question."

"Like, we'd ask, 'What's something a previous employer or educator has recognized you for?' and they'd answer, 'Examples of things that an employer might recognize an employee for are...'"

- Fast_Moon

Cheating On The Interview

"During the pandemic, I was doing remote interviews and the person didn’t turn on their camera. They were quite obviously googling answers to the questions."

"I had another team where they interviewed someone who I guess didn’t expect the camera to be on. Someone off-screen was answering the questions, and they were trying to lip sync in real-time."

- Harbinger2001

"I just recently had a series of remote interviews for a position. The first guy was an excellent interviewer, although he didn't at all match the pictures I had found on social media."

"The hiring committee talked afterward and decided he was likely a paid interviewer."

"On to the next interview the following day. It was the same guy."

- Scary-Boysenberry

A Take-Home Test Gone Wrong

"A candidate submitted a take-home test by email."

"They forgot to excise the text of the email reply chain with their buddy in which, if you scrolled far enough you could see: a. their buddy helped them with the test (actually, buddy did most of it) and b. the two of them weighing up the finer points of a drug deal they were participating in."

"I think we would have reached out to the buddy to see if he was interested in the role if it weren't for the part B."

- benevanstech

100% Red Flag

"My 'favorite' and worst story of red flags was when I screened resumes for a restaurant. A couple walked in dirty, disheveled, and reeking of weed (this was long before it was legal) and asked for applications (they were paper then)."

"They popped at the bar to fill them out and the woman said, 'Babe, babe, what's my zip code? I'm soooo high right now!'"

"Then about five minutes later as they're handing the applications to me, the guy asked, 'Hey, are we getting interviewed now? I got kids in the car.'"

"The woman interrupted, 'They're fine, they're in car seats.'"

"I was horrified it was JANUARY! I ran the papers up to the owner in her office and repeated both comments. She looked outside, jotted down the plate number, and called the local cops."

"When the cops got there, the two of them were trying to get free beers from the bar manager. I'm not sure what happened from there. When I clocked out, the cops had them outside and CPS was involved."

"So yeah. Don't come to apply for a job/have an interview high, smelling, and begging for booze while your toddlers wait in the car in the cold."

- Revolutionary-Yak-47

Treatment Speaks Volumes

"Being a jerk to admin staff. I always talk to my admin immediately after interviews to see how the applicant treats them. If you act condescending or short with our admins, you are pretty much off the list."

- tommyelgreco

"I worked for a company that, to their absolute credit, gave the admin staff 100% authority to veto a candidate based on how they interacted with them. They could even just send them home immediately without the interviewer ever seeing them."

- ZebZamboni

No Drama Needed

"At the end of the interview, which up until this point actually went fairly well, the guy starts asking about the lads he’d be working with, pretty normal for construction, asks how the crew is, how long they’ve worked together…"

"Then out of who knows where, he asks who the biggest guy on the crew was. I didn’t quite understand, so asked him to elaborate. He says he likes to be known as the biggest or toughest guy on site."

"Yeah, no thanks; keep that drama off my worksites."

A Lack Of Accountability

"I was working a job once and a former coworker from another job messaged me on Facebook because he had gotten an interview with us and he wanted to ask me about the job."

"I told him what it was like to work there, gave him a few pointers about what they were probably going to ask him, and wished him luck on the interview."

"He showed up 45 minutes late because he got gas on his way to the interview, locked his keys in the car, and had to wait for AAA to unlock the door for him."

"He didn't get the job, and a few days later un-friended me on Facebook. I later heard that he blamed me for not getting the job and thought that I must have bad-mouthed him to my boss. Some people are just naturally clueless."

- A911owner

A Lack Of Empathy

"I interviewed this lady, and when I asked her for an example of an obstacle at a previous workplace, she brought up how she had an issue with an old coworker. At the end of her explanation, she said the coworker died of cancer."

"Of course, I said, 'Oh, I'm sorry,' and she responded, 'She got what she deserved.'"

"NO, NO THANK YOU, NEXT."

- HandsLikePaper

"I had a coworker who died of cancer several years ago. She was one of the most hateful people I've ever worked with, and everybody hated her, and that was before the diagnosis."

"Then she got her diagnosis and everybody still hated her, but they were much more closeted about it (it got brought up in individual conversations rather than someone making an offhand comment about her in a meeting she wasn't present for)."

"Then she passed from the cancer, and everybody clammed up immediately."

"I made an offhand comment to a coworker about not having to deal with a s**t attitude out of whoever had taken over the lady's job function, and you would've thought I'd murdered someone in cold blood based on the coworker's reaction. 'She died of cancer, you cannot say bad things about her like that.'"

"My response was basically, 'I don't wish that on anyone and it's horrible what she went through; nobody deserves that. But she was a hateful a**hole well before the diagnosis, and I'm not gonna pretend she wasn't simply just because she had a totally unrelated horrible thing happen to her.'"

- Gameguy336

Poor Problem-Solving Skills

"I'm a mechanical engineer, and I have to interview candidates from time to time."

"In general, I give them a really simple technical question that I would expect a high schooler to solve. It's literally going to be things like, 'Calculate the force on this object.'"

"The more you deviate away from, 'Force equals mass times acceleration,' the more I know you are going to be a bad hire."

"Not only does it show a fundamental misunderstanding of the material at hand. It also shows me that when you don't know the answer, you're prone to taking up meeting time endlessly pointing out true but impossible-to-solve problems."

- Ashi4Days

Constructive Conversations

"When interviewing people I always try to find a way to subtly disagree or challenge one of their positions (whether I really disagree or not) and their reactions mostly fall into one of three categories."

"1. They agree with me/take it as a learning opportunity (green flag)."

"2. They confidently back up their claim with supporting statements (very green flag)."

"3. They get defensive/territorial that I’ve challenged them (red flag)."

- BckCntry94

Time To Go

"I had two interviews for a software dev position this year that stood out."

"During the first one, the guy was well into the interview and going through the coding portion when the door opened behind him. A woman stepped in and asked something about reports and to wrap up what he was doing. When she left, he turned back to the screen and said he was sorry, but he had to go and ended the call."

"In the second, a guy who was doing alright, but halfway through the interview, he just stopped responding to us (the call wasn't frozen, he just stopped talking/responding). Then the call just ended and we never heard anything from him again, even after reaching out to see if he had connection issues and wanted to reschedule."

- NotAClownCar

Worthy Of A Second Chance

"A guy I know who works in the IT industry told me when a girl he interviewed for a junior Developer job had a complete meltdown and completely froze. The interview ended awkwardly and that was that."

"A couple of days later, the girl sent an email explaining she had issues with anxiety and asked for a second chance."

"Of course, my friend gave her that chance, and she came in more confident, nailed it, and got hired. She now works as a product owner after 5 years with the company."

- luddoro

From unpreparedness to rudeness to simply lying, it's clear why these would be potential candidates who would not be hired.

The interview is generally when people are on their best behavior, and if this is how they behaved, there's no telling how they'd be once they were a few months into their position at the office.