Posted in Management Best Practices

Three Potential Red Flags to Spot in a Candidate

Avoid the scare of a bad hire by learning to identify red flags during the interview process. In this article, we will highlight three common warning signs in candidates for financial roles and offer tips on how to spot them before making your decision. Enhance your hiring process with expert screening and help from hiring professionals like PrideStaff Financial.

Questionable work history:

Look closely at a candidate’s past work history. Can you verify past employers? Does the candidate have examples of past work that align with those employers and their business models? Does the information on the resume match what they tell you about their work? If they were fired from their previous role, they should know why and what they could do differently in a future job, and they shouldn’t hide that in the interview. Also, look for employment gaps. There can be many reasons for acceptable employment gaps. For example, maybe they did professional development during a” gap period.” However, unexplained gaps in work history should give you a reason to ask some more questions.

They act as if they’ve never made mistakes:

Even the most qualified candidate is not perfect. If your candidate can’t admit any failures and spends the majority of the interview bragging about their achievements, then they may not be good at self-reflecting. A well-rounded candidate will know that they have areas where they can improve. Admitting these weaknesses but framing them positively — or explaining how they are working on those issues — is a strong interviewing technique. If a candidate says they have no weaknesses or have never failed at anything, it could be a sign that they aren’t open to growth, self-improvement, and development.

The candidate doesn’t know anything about your company:

Researching the company before a job interview is interview etiquette 101. If the candidate comes to the interview and doesn’t know what you do or any details about the company, then watch out. It takes only a few minutes to review a company’s website and the job description to know something about what the company does, so be wary if a candidate doesn’t make this small effort in advance. That is a sign of more systemic, internally rooted habits.

Questionable work history:

They act as if they’ve never made mistakes:

The candidate doesn’t know anything about your company:

PrideStaff Financial’s highly skilled staffing consultants are ready to support your hiring needs.