4 Organizational Red Flags That Turn Off Job Candidates

Every organization and team leader wants to recruit the right talent. But what if you’re struggling to do so? Qualified applicants are few and far between, interviews aren’t yielding enough information to make decisions, and promising candidates are bowing out. The problem is probably your hiring process: Prospective team members are seeing red flags that make them hesitant to joining you. When we asked more than 350 HBS Executive Education participants (top and senior leaders from one of the 500 largest companies in Europe, a global consumer goods group, and more than 40 U.S. businesses in a variety of industries) to identify the main areas of concern for professionals evaluating whether or not they want to work somewhere, four key ones emerged: lack of clarity about the job or organization; bad recruitment/selection practices; a prevalence of unpleasant or unhappy people; and high turnover in the position and/or a poor corporate track record. Here, we offer more detail on each of these organizational red flags to help you identify whether it’s a problem for you. To overcome them, we recommend that senior leaders and hiring teams focus on three Cs (which are, not coincidentally, the same ones we recommended in our previous piece advising candidates on how to avoid giving off their own red flags.) Clarity: Know what you want and what you offer. Courtesy: Treat others with respect, professionalism, and kindness. Coherence: Tell a coherent story about past decisions/successes/failures and how they connect to the present moment and to future plans. Lack of Clarity Companies sometimes fail to convey the basic facts about mission, values, and culture. Our executive education participants, who were divided into small discussion groups, told us that candidates are wary “if strategy cannot be articulated.” Multiple teams cited “no discussion about company culture” or “failure to articulate company values and provide examples” as problematic. When details on the role are sparse, it can also create concern. “Lack of clarity in expectations for job responsibilities” was noted as a major red flag, in particular lack of “definitions of success” and success metrics and “unclear or shifting expectations.” (Ironically, the candidates most likely to be driven off by these deficiencies will be the most conscientious and achievement-minded ones.) Candidates want to know the details of the immediate and short-term (“what is the day to day”) as well as “long-term career path and/or compensation.” A final issue raised was lack of internal alignment or “inconsistency in messaging.” Whether members of the hiring team are talking about big-picture mission and strategy or more specifically about the role, “does the message stay the same throughout the interview process?” What can help Communicate the big picture internally. To avoid misalignment, have a pre-set list of questions or statements that make the company mission, values, and culture clear. Understand hiring goals. Everyone should have a common understanding of the role being filled: why it is vacant, why it was created to begin with, and struggles and accomplishments of those who have held the role. Determine the skills needed to do the job, the responsibilities it involves, and what success looks like. Then write a clear job description, competency checklist, and outline of desired outcomes or performance goals. Finally, design interview questions to help uncover how candidates match up to your requirements. Bad Hiring Practices This category represented a variety of missteps, such as a generally “disorganized process,” with a “lack of prep/urgency” and insufficient communication about timing. Executives told us they were made wary by “lack of honesty/transparency on what’s going on” and particularly disliked hiring teams “blocking you from talking to peers” or “not allowing/encouraging multiple interviews with different people in the organization.” There were multiple mentions of interviewers showing a lack of interest or respect in comments such as “doesn’t care about your interests,” “no two-way conversation,” and “no ‘why would you want to work there.’” Finally, respondents noted “biases (work-life balance, gender roles, ageism)” and “getting too personal” around family life and similar topics. What can help Clearly outline the process and set a timeline: how many interviews to prepare for, what the flow of each will be, and when to expect a response. Train hiring managers and any other interviewers on the parameters of confidential information and what questions can and cannot be legally asked in an interview. Check alignment between jobseekers and managers. In an initial interview, you might “ask a candidate to state what they believe the job is.” In subsequent ones, ask what they’ve already discussed and learned. Solicit feedback from candidates on how well the entire process was run. Unpleasant/Unhappy People This overlaps somewhat with the category above if the interviewers are disengaged, unprepared, or preoccupied, or even fail to greet the candidate warmly on arrival. One group put it bluntly: no one is excited to work with an interviewer who is “a jerk.” Promising candidates can also be put off when they see employees with a “miserable attitude” who don’t “seem to be excited about being at the company” and “don’t like each other” or don’t have anything positive to say. What can help Support hiring managers. If recruitment comes on top of all their other work, they might be stretched too thin to do it well. Make sure they have time to properly screen and evaluate candidates and conduct in-depth interviews. Set expectations for civility. Establish a general protocol for how visitors to the office, including job candidates, are to be treated. Explain and model the positive energy you expect interviewers to bring to their interactions. Prioritize morale before a doom loop begins. If people aren’t happy, ensure the organization is taking steps to remedy the problem. Turnover/Organizational Reputation Candidates will be understandably wary of organizations with high turnover rates or which seem to have “the same position open for a long time or over and over”). Most will also avoid companies with poor reputations, a “laundry list of problems,” or whose “lack of track record of success or reputation in industry is not good.” What can help Don’t dismiss or downplay legitimate concerns. Address them in the interview process, acknowledging and explaining the scope of problems, which may be more nuanced than the candidate realizes if they are primarily informed by rumor and headlines. Ensure that everyone the candidate interacts with is on the same page as to their understanding of the issues and what steps are being taken to remedy them. Find out what the candidate’s personal concerns are and ask what would mitigate them. When candidates see red flags in your organization, it might point to a deeper issue that leaders need to understand and resolve such as lack of engagement. Often, however, easing a prospective team member’s concern can be as simple as ensuring that everyone involved in the hiring process is communicating with clarity, courtesy, and coherence.

4 Organizational Red Flags That Turn Off Job Candidates

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