Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

When it comes to job interviews, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that the company holds all the power.

Candidates often focus solely on impressing the interviewer, believing they are the ultimate decision-makers. However, interviews are a two-way street, where both parties are evaluating the fit. 

Companies are searching for talent to meet their needs, while candidates should assess whether the company aligns with their goals and values. This makes it equally important for both sides to recognize red flags.

Two sides of the coin

From the company’s perspective, the goal of a job interview is to find a candidate who can fulfill the role’s responsibilities. Often, they’ll go beyond immediate needs, seeking potential for long-term growth to ensure their investment benefits the company’s future. Additionally, beyond technical skills, cultural fit is crucial. Companies aim to hire individuals who will contribute positively to their environment.

Candidates’ priorities are different. They may focus on a competitive salary, a positive work environment, and supportive colleagues. Many also seek opportunities to develop new skills or a clear career path that aligns with their goals.

Regardless of the motivations on either side, it’s essential to reflect on what you’re looking for before entering the interview process.

Red flags

There are numerous red flags to watch for during the interview process. While major topics such as honesty, technical expertise, and cultural fit are often top of mind, it’s easy to overlook smaller nuances.

Here are a few red flags I’ve encountered firsthand.

The hiring manager

True believers

In engineering, there is rarely a definitive right or wrong; everything depends on context and the trade-offs. Working with someone who staunchly believes in a specific technology, methodology, or approach can be challenging. One programming language is rarely better than another, and it almost always depends on other factors. 

In practice, you’ll often encounter individuals with unwavering beliefs. When pressed on why their stance is so rigid, their responses tend to be shallow. This is a destructive behavior pattern, especially when multiple people share this mindset.

In technology, everything is eventually replaced or evolves. Hiring someone stuck on a single ideology risks cementing your organization in the present, making it harder to adapt to future changes. This is where structured interviews, like scalar interviews, can be invaluable.

Self-awareness

In interviews, we encounter candidates with varying levels of self-awareness. Some may lack confidence, believing they struggle to learn new things, while others may have an inflated sense of their abilities, thinking they can excel at anything. But the value of a candidate who recognizes their own limitations cannot be overstated.

There will always be new tools, techniques, or domains we have yet to master. By acknowledging our limitations, we can take proactive steps to overcome them through learning, collaboration, or seeking guidance. Candidates who understand where they need to grow offer far greater long-term value than those who believe they already know it all.

We should be alarmed when we hear statements such as:

• I don’t really have any weaknesses. Everything I do is to a high level.
• Honestly, I was the reason our last project succeeded. The team couldn’t have pulled it off without me.

Similarly, the opposite is equally worrying:

• I don’t have as much experience as some other candidates might.
• I mostly followed what others told me to do in my last job, so I’m unsure how much value I really added.

Growth mindset

An open mindset toward receiving feedback is crucial because it fosters continuous improvement, learning, and adaptability. When candidates are receptive to feedback, they can identify areas for growth, refine their skills, and approach challenges more effectively. 

This openness helps them evolve professionally and contributes to a culture of collaboration and mutual respect within the company. Engineers who embrace constructive criticism set an example for others, creating an environment where feedback is a valuable tool for growth. This leads to stronger teams, better problem-solving, and a more innovative, supportive company culture.

If you aim to foster a culture of growth built on collaboration and feedback, one way to assess candidates is by providing constructive feedback on one of their answers during the interview. Some candidates may react defensively, revealing a lack of openness to growth. Others might accept the feedback silently. However, the best candidates typically ask follow-up questions to better understand the feedback, demonstrating a genuine eagerness to learn and improve.

Motivation

Candidates can be motivated in different ways. Some are driven by intrinsic motivation, demonstrated by statements like, “I want to be the best in my field,” or “I’m passionate about continuous learning and growth.” Others may show extrinsic motivation, with comments such as “I want to prove my worth,” “I’ve always dreamed of working for a tech giant,” or, “At my stage in life, I shouldn’t have to worry about certain challenges.”

While both types of motivation can be valuable, extremes on either side may signal potential issues. Excessive intrinsic motivation might lead to emotional ups and downs, as the candidate may become overly attached to their personal goals or achievements. Conversely, too much extrinsic motivation can result in disappointment if the candidate doesn’t quickly achieve their desired rewards, such as promotions or recognition.

Finding a balance between motivations grounded in personal growth and company vision signals an engaged and committed candidate: someone driven by more than just financial rewards and who values tangible career advancements. 

Curiosity

Curious engineers stay ahead of industry changes by exploring new tools and technologies, keeping their skills sharp and enabling their companies to remain competitive. By asking “why” and “how,” they go beyond surface-level fixes, uncovering innovative solutions that address core issues.

Additionally, curiosity promotes collaboration and innovation. Engineers who explore diverse ideas and share knowledge strengthen their teams and contribute to a culture of experimentation. This proactive approach enables them to create groundbreaking products helping build solutions that directly address user pain points by staying attuned to customer needs.

During an interview, candidates often encounter terms, technologies, or methodologies they are unfamiliar with, or they might face questions they can’t immediately answer. Curious candidates typically view these moments as opportunities. They show excitement and ask insightful follow-up questions. A lack of such behavior suggests a limited desire to learn and grow.

Protagonist mindset

Candidates who refuse to take responsibility for a company’s success or failure often demonstrate a passive approach to challenges. They’re more likely to give up when faced with difficulties and shift blame to others.

This behavior often becomes evident when we ask candidates why they’re considering leaving their current positions. Those without a protagonist mindset tend to blame their environment, tools, or colleagues for failing to support their goals, rather than reflect on their efforts to drive change.

Here are a couple of example statements one might hear from someone who does not possess such a mindset:

• This project is a mess because management doesn’t know what they’re doing. They keep changing the requirements, and there’s no way to succeed with this kind of chaos.
• The codebase is garbage because the company never invests in tech debt. If they don’t care, why should I?

While there are valid reasons for leaving a company, the ideal response emphasizes a candidate’s efforts to help their organization succeed, even if those efforts ultimately fell short. 

A story of determined action and lessons learned is far more compelling than one focused on external blame. For example, it’s better to hear how an engineer successfully persuaded management to prioritize quality than to hear how powerless they felt to make a difference.

The candidate

Over-processed vs chaotic

Some recruitment processes are highly structured. You know exactly when you’ll be speaking to whom, how many stages are involved, and may even receive guides on the types of questions to expect. This often indicates that the company is internally structured and likely bureaucratic. In contrast, interviewing with a start-up might involve little structure. You could be invited to a technical interview only to find yourself in a culture interview instead. This lack of organization often reflects the company’s chaotic nature. Depending on the type of environment you’re seeking, you may view either as a red flag.

Alignment

Working for a company where employees are aligned under a single direction is always better than one where competing priorities create confusion. A simple tactic to assess this is to ask every interviewer the same question: What are the company’s priorities? If their answers consistently point in the same direction, you’re in for a great experience. If not, be prepared to put in significant effort to establish that alignment yourself.

Alignment is critical because it reduces friction. When teams and stakeholders are not aligned, competing priorities can create inefficiencies. 

A team might be working on breaking down a monolithic application into microservices to improve scalability and deployment speed, while another team invests resources in building tools and frameworks to make the existing monolith easier to work with. This misalignment leads to wasted effort and confused teams, as the tooling work could become obsolete once the system is broken apart, while the migration effort is potentially slowed by continued investment in the monolith. On the other hand, alignment ensures that everyone’s efforts contribute to the same goals, driving impactful results and fostering a cohesive work environment.

Feedback

A culture based on feedback is one in which we all will grow. To ensure that the company you’re applying for has such a culture, you could try asking for feedback at the end of every interview. If you observe that this question is catching everyone by surprise, you will see that the culture is not very open to giving and receiving feedback.

The feedback you ask for should focus on improving your performance in upcoming interviews, rather than on how the current interview went. Questions like the ones below will not only help you better prepare for future stages but also give you insight into the company’s feedback culture:

• Looking ahead to upcoming interviews, should I deepen or broaden any areas of my technical knowledge or skill set?
• For future interviews, do you have any suggestions on how I can improve my communication, especially when explaining technical concepts or my thought process?
• Are there ways to better highlight my collaboration and teamwork skills during technical discussions?

Focus on strengths

Organizations often fall into the trap of fixating on what went wrong, frantically searching for candidates who can patch up perceived weaknesses in their teams, or implementing development programs aimed at fixing shortcomings. 

This deficit-based thinking is deeply ingrained in our educational systems, performance reviews, and management practices. When a child brings home a report card with four As and one D, where does the conversation focus? The D. 

This same mindset carries over into the workplace, where countless hours and resources are spent trying to transform weaknesses into strengths. Instead of asking “what’s wrong and how do we fix it?” companies should be asking “what’s working and how do we get more of it?” This shift to a strengths-based approach isn’t just about positive thinking – it’s about recognizing that people’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of their natural talents. This approach aligns with the principles of CliftonStrengths, which emphasize leveraging individual strengths to drive engagement, productivity, and overall team effectiveness.

Consider how interviewers approach their questions. One might focus on what you’re not good at, drilling into how you’ve addressed those weaknesses, while another might focus on your strengths, asking how you’ve applied them. 

These questions reveal whether the company values effectively leveraging your unique skills. For example, a weakness-focused interviewer might ask, “I see you don’t have much experience with Python programming. How do you plan to overcome this gap?” Or, “What would your previous manager say is your biggest area for improvement?” 

In contrast, a strengths-based interviewer might ask, “Tell me about a project where you felt most energized and accomplished. What made it special?” Or “When you’re at your best at work, what are you typically doing?” 

The first approach assumes deficits need fixing, while the second seeks to understand where you naturally excel and how to leverage those talents. The difference is subtle but significant where one organization is looking to mold you into their predetermined ideal, while the other is exploring how your unique strengths could add value to their team.

Ultimately, when we’re hired, our role is to improve the company, not to have the company fix our flaws. Therefore, it’s crucial to seek out organizations that understand and embrace this mindset.

Transparency

During interviews, one key task of the interviewer is to sell the company to you. They’ll highlight exciting aspects of the role and the organization. However, no workplace is perfect. Every company has its strengths and shortcomings and the best colleagues are realistic about what they’d like to see improved. Asking about these shortcomings can reveal a lot about the organization. A good way to start this conversation is by asking, “What are a couple of things you’d like to see changed in your current role?”

You may notice patterns by repeating this question across multiple interviews. If the same name repeatedly comes up, it could indicate a toxic environment caused by a “brilliant jerk.” Alternatively, it might signal a lack of transparency about the organization’s challenges.

Final thoughts 

The interview process is the perfect time to look for and address red flags, whether you’re a hiring manager or candidate. 

For hiring managers, signs such as rigid candidates who resist change or lack curiosity and self-awareness can indicate potential challenges. For candidates, red flags may include disorganized interview processes, a lack of alignment within the company, or an absence of a feedback-driven culture.

Both companies and candidates should be proactive in recognizing potential issues during interviews. This ensures a more informed decision-making process, fostering long-term success and satisfaction for both parties.

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