Hiring managers share the red flags that they don't want to see in prospective employees

Employees or bad decisions?

If you think securing a job is tough, then you might need to know how the other side of the employment network functions. Hiring managers face no fewer difficulties than job aspirants when tasked to find the right candidate for a particular position. From sorting through countless applications to judging the skill to picking out the deserving workforce who can do justice to their position in the company. The hiring managers not only have to focus on the qualifications and the amount of work experience a candidate has, but they have to look their attitude towards work, their body language and much more. u/greyghost6 questioned the Reddit community, "Hiring managers of Reddit, what red flag did you miss or ignore during an interview that ended up costing you later?" The working professionals who had first-hand encounters with weird employees and had to sit down to interview them shared their stories about how long these employees lasted once they were hired. Since the hiring managers missed out on the obvious red flags displayed by these job aspirants during their interviews, the company had to regret their decision to hire them later.

1. Employee stole money

My partner hired some guy for a store he was working at many years ago. I have an intuition about most people. I get a 'feeling' like anyone, but I'm usually spot on. This guy was a real piece of work and I picked up on it quickly. I kept telling my partner to fire him before things got really bad and lo and behold, this fella took money out of the deposit bag to 'recount it because he didn't trust my partner had done it properly' and $1000 went missing. Needless to say, my partner got the brunt of the pain from upper management and this fellow was finally fired. Next time, they better listen to me. - u/irescueteddybears

2. Lying during interviews

The candidate for the supervisor position was asked about a time when they had trouble completing a task. The candidate mentioned something they struggled with, but the answer was that they found a way of completing the task that worked for them and did that going forward. So we kind of take that to be a big positive for thinking outside the box and being able to solve problems independently using the tools available to them. Fast-forward and the candidate is now the supervisor. We have a team of about 12. There is an opening checklist and a closing checklist. The supervisor struggles with learning tasks on the checklist. No other team member has an issue with tasks on the checklist as it writes out what buttons you need to press. The supervisor concludes that the checklist is poorly done since they cannot understand it. Proceeds to make changes to the checklist master document to the way they feel it should be done and chaos ensues. This supervisor was up for a Manager position at another location. Supervisor puts on their resume 'revamped morning/evening checklists for improved team performance.' Couldn't help but chuckle at that one. - u/BadLuckBaskin

3. Employee who can only criticize

Not a hiring manager, but was evaluating applications for a position. One candidate gave some very thoughtful, insightful criticisms of his current workplace. We appreciated his candor and the content of the critiques was perceptive. When we hired him, we realized that while he spoke well and appeared intelligent, all he could do was criticize everything, even when his criticisms made no sense. We started to see him complaining about the same things with us that he complained about in his letter, objectively false things (like our vacation policy being use-it-or-lose-it, which it wasn't). Moral: a good candidate will find ways to frame criticisms in a positive, forward-looking way in a cover letter, not complain about their current employer. - u/Moltrire

4. Arrogant employees

One applicant had this weird, sort of arrogant body language during the interview. But, because they looked great on paper and otherwise interviewed okay, I wrote it off as anxiety or something. The joke's on me because that person ended up being the whiniest, snottiest, most vile individual. Thank God they found another job before I had to let them go. - u/duffs007. I've learned over the years to trust the Spidey Sense. When you see odd behaviors, there's a temptation to write it off as jitters, but most of the time, those behaviors really do indicate that something really is off. - u/scootermcgee2358

5. Employee acting like a boss

Hired a guy to be a seller of cannabis products for a new dispensary I'm about to open. He has tons of experience as a salesman and knows his job. In the interview, he got a little bit rebellious about his salary and health benefits. We hired the guy and gave him his ideal salary plus commissions plus benefits. The first day, he started giving me orders and asking where he rank on the chain of command. I tell him I'm his boss and he doesn't like that so much. Then he started giving out candy to all the females in the office and telling them, 'I was thinking about you...have some chocolate.' I told him that wouldn't fly here and he should cool it. He told me he was a 'social butterfly' and that I was uptight. This was all during his first week. Whatever. The very next Monday (His 6th day on the job) I get called into the owner's office with the head of human resources and they straight up asks me what I think of the guy. Turns out all of the females who got the candy from him felt heavily harassed. The dude barely lasted a week on an awesome job because he was a social butterfly. - u/RunDatTriangle

6. Nepotistic employee

10 years ago, I used to ask everyone, 'What do you think of the band Phish?' It was a way to weed out slackers, stoners, dope heads, etc. Asked one guy that and he goes off on a 5-minute tangent about following Phish around the country or something. I vote no on the guy. Turns out his grandfather is some super senior executive at a big client, so the guy automatically gets hired. I tell the department head, 'Bro, it's totally cool we hired this guy, but we need to allocate his whole salary to business development and not let the department take a hit to our metrics when he is a screw-up.' I got told, 'Oh no, he'll be a great worker.' This guy was the most worthless person I've ever laid eyes on and his metrics pulled down our whole department. When his granddad retired, he got run out after about a week but got a freaking year of severance. - u/Mail_Order_Lutefisk

7. Employee prioritizing other job

Last summer, I landscaped with this guy who would consistently oversleep and show up hours later (we had to be at the work site at 7 AM SHARP) and when he didn't. He was clearly very drowsy and unproductive. My boss said that in the interview, the guy said he had a small part-time job, but it wouldn't be a problem. Well, it turns out he was working as a bartender almost every night until 2 AM. My boss had to fire him because he was clearly prioritizing his other job over ours. I would feel bad for the guy if he didn't screw us over so many times (it was just the boss and 3 workers, including me, so just one person missing was a big problem). - u/dingusfunk

8. Very opinionated employees

Not a hiring manager but a development team leader. Had to hire new people for the team. This guy came along with a ton of experience, pretty much spot on. There were some differences in code styles, but that was that. The only thing was, the guy was around 15 years older than me and had 10 years of experience. I specifically asked him how he would be around someone much younger, maybe making decisions that he might not like (I’m all up for democracy in projects, but sometimes there is more at play than specifics, as a developer, I know what those are like). He told me he was and that we could just talk about it when it came up. Turned out I was arguing over every little thing in a 'his way or the highway' kind of deal. Should have seen that one coming in hindsight. - u/enplanedrole

9. Employees with no experience

A couple of seventeen-year-old boys were dropped off by their father with frozen yogurt cups in their hands. The older one walked up to the desk and, with fucking froyo in his mouth, asked, 'Can I get an application?' The brothers spent almost half an hour eating frozen yogurt, laughing and joking with each other and filling out that application in our lobby. It was maybe a five-minute application. When they handed their applications to me, I took them back to our brand new HR lady and told her about these kids who were obviously only looking for jobs because Daddy made them do it. It was funny to me and she laughed along with me. She hired both of them on the spot. Before that point, applicants were required to have a minimum of three years of experience in whatever field they were applying for. Neither of these kids had ever had a job before. That place went downhill rapidly under that HR manager because she would just hire anybody she liked which meant she only hired attractive, highly extroverted teenagers. Those two boys and just about everyone else that woman hired were terrible. - u/LobbyJockey

10. When they are misogynist

Not a hiring manager, but I recently worked under a supervisor who had been out of the industry for several years but was trying to make a move back in. During his interviews, he apparently directed his answers only to the men in the room, even if the question was asked by a woman. They hired him anyway, and once he started, he refused to work with the women on the team - even though they knew more of the industry since it had changed quite a bit since this guy had left. Thankfully, he was let go about a year after he was hired. - u/LovelyOtherDino