Six Reasons to Run from a Job Opportunity

The big myth among job-seekers is the one that goes "Employers are in the driver's seat. There are so many people chasing so few jobs." Oh, please! True: lots of people are out of work. But employers aren't high-fiving one another for their good fortune. It's still incredibly hard to find good people to fill the jobs employers have open.

If it matters which people we hire at any point in time, it matters most when economic conditions are tough. Competition is fierce. Employers can't afford to hire just anyone when they have a job opening. Switched-on candidates have a huge advantage, if they know their worth and their power in the talent equation. And if they do, they'll also be on high alert for these six red flags that signal "This employer will never value you. Run away, now!"

Here's our list of six very good reasons to run from an interview process and invest your time in finding an organization that 'gets' you, rather than taking a job with one that never, ever will:

Your Time Means Nothing
My friend Bettina got a call from a headhunter who asked "Can you do a phone screener with my client firm tomorrow?" "I can do it," said Bettina. "Oh good, and if that goes well, can you fly to New York the day after tomorrow?" "Uh, no," said Bettina. "I have a job. I'm working." "Oh, too bad, that's the client's schedule," said the headhunter. "Oh well. I'll keep looking." Nice hiring plan! Only those job-seekers who can contort their personal (and business) lives into pretzel shapes will be acceptable to this hiring organization. How much respect for your personal life do you think these folks will show once they've got you on board?

It's All About Us
Carmen came to a webinar I was leading, on the topic of job interviews. "On my last job interview," she said, "they asked me questions for fifty minutes. At the end of that time the interviewer asked 'Do you have any questions?' and I pulled out my cheat sheet, with four or five questions listed on it. I had actually thought of a couple more questions while I was answering theirs, but I figured I'd start with my top three questions and see if we had more time than that. Too bad for me -- the interviewer said 'Oh, I didn't expect a whole list of questions. I'm sorry, we won't have time to get to your questions today.' In other words, no questions for you, missy!"

Carmen went home without having opened her mouth except to answer questions about her technical and functional skills (all things that could have been handled in a phone interview, as she thought about it). Employers who believe that the only decision to be made in an interview pipeline is "Is this the right candidate?" forget that the job-seeker is an equal partner in the talent equation -- and those me-first employers don't deserve you.

No, You Can't See That Document
I encourage job-seekers to ask for a copy of the company's employee handbook as they get to the second-interview stage. If the employer won't give you a handbook to take home and read, get on the bus, Gus! Since the employee handbook is the very document that will define your working relationship with these folks, why on earth would they be hesitant to share it? That's a bad sign. Don't expect an open-minded, talent-focused organization when the early signs of baked-in bureaucracy are all over.

Meet the Team? Sorry, No Can Do
If you get the job you're interviewing for, you're going to be working with the people on your team for many hours a day, many days a week. Before you accept an offer, you've got to meet those people. If the boss is reluctant to let the inmates out of their cells long enough to meet you, run! Next time a new hire is in the pipeline, that could be you, chained to your desk. Employers who don't respect the team members well enough to involve them in the hiring process don't get to keep great people.

Prove It To Us
Anything you tell a prospective employer could be false, if you think about it. Anything they tell you could likewise be made up on the spot ("I invented the Internet, actually.") You and they are thinking about entering into a fairly long-term agreement. Everybody has to trust everybody. In the middle of that kind of interaction, can you believe that an employer would say "You have to give us proof of what you earned at the last job.?" That's slimy. An employer who insists on proof of your last salary deserves B-minus players, at best. If these guys don't trust you, why should you trust them, or attach your sturdy brand to theirs?

Everything But the Offer
By the second interview at the same employer, the HR folks or your hiring manager should be able to tell you what the rest of the selection process will look like and roughly how long it will take. If the candidate-sorting process seems to stretch out endlessly before you, with a new gate being added every step of the way ("We've decided there are three more sales guys we want you to meet") you are being played. Don't stand for it, unless you're ready to sign up to be somebody's doormat.

"My sense is that I'm not especially high on your list of top candidates for this job, and that's fine," you can say on a voicemail message or in a live call with your asleep-at-the-wheel hiring manager. "I should drop out of the process and give you time to close it up. If I don't hear from you by the end of the day today, I'll close the file and wish you the best."

You don't have time to truck with people who can't make up their minds. Stepping away from not-exciting opportunities will only make it easier for the universe to show you the good ones. Cultivating the spidey sense to know when a job opportunity is heading into pearls-before-swine territory is a professional must-do!