‘What’s a red flag from an employer that people might not immediately spot?’ – 25 to look out for

Poke Staff. Updated January 28th, 2022

13.

‘When they refuse to tell you what your starting salary would be or when they just avoid the question all together. Like I didn’t apply to the job to be a part of some “family” work culture, I came here to get a job and be paid.’
UnknownL_13

‘Asking if you are somebody who’s “willing to put in the time to make sure deadlines are met/work is done” or if you’re “the type of person who leaves when the ‘workday’ is finished?”

‘This is generally corporate speak for “we will be forcing you to work unpaid overtime”.’
rockkicker27

15.

“Competitive pay” but they wont tell you what the pay actually is in the posting or even the interview.’
topothesia773

16.

‘I’ve always found the hiring process to be a pretty accurate reflection of how your time with the company will be.

‘So, if they make you jump through a million hoops just to be hired you can expect any kind of raise or promotion to be the same. If they are asking you your thoughts on conflict then you can expect that you’ll be working with at least one difficult person who is a known problem employee. If they say fast paced/tight deadlines then expect to work overtime. If HR is a mess then don’t expect good onboarding etc etc.’
Tk-20

17.

‘Trying to rush a decision out of you once the offer is made.

I once interviewed with a company where I would have been relocating across the country to work for them. There were 3 rounds of interviews and they left me completely in the dark for weeks on end between each round before inviting me to the next round within just a few days of when the interview would take place.

‘After the final interview it was over a month of silence from them until they made an offer but told me I had less than 24 hours to let them know my decision. I would have been moving 2,000 miles away from home to a place I had never been or even seen before (interviews were completely virtual). They wanted me to start 6 days after the offer had been made.

‘When I asked if there was any flexibility for me to have more time to think it over or have more time to move out there, they said no. They needed the decision the next day and if I accepted I would be starting in less than a week. I declined the offer.’
aattanasio2014

18.

‘Any job ad that doesn’t mention the name of the company should raise suspicions, doubly so if it’s anything to do with sales. Got done by that trick once. Turned up to the interview and the ‘job’ was going door to door selling vacuums for Kirby vacuums.’
satisfiedfools

19.

‘If the job description has a nondescriptively massive salary range.’
JetSetJAK

20.

‘Anything that the manager says in the interview that doesn’t line up with the job description.

“yea we posted it’s a manager level position, but this is actually a coordinator role”.

“yea the description says travel is 25% but it might be closer to 50 it just depends”.

“We did post it as a remote job, but we prefer people to be in the office X days a week”

“Yea we phrase it that way in the job description because corporate says we have to”

‘All of those are red flags. ANYTHING a company is vague about should be a red flag.’
coolguytrav

21.

‘The “sink or swim” technique. It was my first day as a cashier, I got a couple of hours of training, then I was by myself and we were dead. All of a sudden this rush came in and I was asking for help. The manager goes “sink or swim, we’re busy back here, figure it out.”

‘Lol I did but let me tell you customers were not happy because I still didn’t know how to properly enter in orders, especially modifications.’
I_am_dean

22.

‘I always ask the question “why is this role open? Is it a new role, or am I replacing someone? Why did that person leave?” This really helps you seeing their reaction and if they look nervous it’s because the person who left did it because they were not happy.’
mfgfvd

23.

‘When they say, or try to make you sign, anything pertaining to not discussing your wages with other employees.. that shit is illegal and it SCREAMS that people aren’t being fairly compensated for their work. I’ve literally up and walked the fuck out of jobs for this.’
EndlesslyUnfinished

24.

‘When an employee quits or gets fired from the job and the company doesn’t hire anyone new to replace them.

‘It can be hard to tell as a red flag at first, but the temporary workload they added to your own over that was left over after the person left, slowly becomes your new permanent workload, without any changes to your pay or benefits to compensate for the additional tasks. The further out it goes without the position being filled, the larger and more obvious the red flag becomes.’
The_Quicktrigger

25.

‘The quality of the toilet paper in the bathroom. There are minimal if any cost savings to 1 ply and it just shows they couldn’t care about you at all.’
Siveri16

Source Reddit u/taylortaylortaylorrr Image Unsplash Tim Gouw

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