🚩 Red Flags Before Day One

What interviews reveal about company culture long before your first day.

Interviewing Is Hard 💼

Interviewing is challenging for everyone involved. Recruiters must sift through countless CVs to identify relevant candidates. Hiring managers endure hour after hour of interviews. Candidates have a full-time job of answering the same questions repeatedly.

To make matters worse, candidates must now optimise CVs for recruiters, hiring managers, and ATS systems just to reach that first critical interview. Recruiters and hiring managers, meanwhile, have to filter out AI-generated applications 🤖, as well as identify candidates who have merely learned to pass interviews rather than genuinely perform the role. The entire process has become a frustrating experience, clearly overdue for an evolution.

Having spent a considerable amount of time navigating the job market recently - and with over a decade of industry experience - I wanted to share some of the common warning signs I’ve encountered that suggest a company may not be the right fit 🚩.

Undervaluing Candidates 🧩

Most interviews aim to determine whether a candidate has the right skills for the role. This is usually a fair balance of “has skill A,” “has transferable skill B,” or “doesn’t have skill C.” However, some interviews seem entirely focused on undervaluing the candidate.

In these cases, interviewers show little interest when you discuss your strengths, achievements, or relevant projects. Yet the moment you mention a gap in experience or a missing skill - even a transferable one - they eagerly take notes.

This behaviour signals that the company is trying to justify offering a lower salary right from the start. It often indicates there will be little to no room for personal development and that pay rises are likely to lag behind inflation - effectively resulting in a pay decrease over time. In environments like this, you’re effectively encouraged to leave almost as soon as you join.

Negative Communication 🗣️

Most interviews conclude by setting expectations, such as timelines for feedback - something I deeply appreciate. However, some companies use this moment to undermine candidates, aiming to make them doubt their abilities, feel less confident negotiating salaries, and believe the company is doing them a favour by offering them a position.

In one interview, I was told, “We won’t be in touch for a couple of weeks because we have a lot of better candidates.” “Better”? Then why waste time on me? Ironically, the next stage invitation was sitting in my inbox the very next morning. I declined to proceed - belittling candidates from the outset is a major red flag.

Poor Interviewer Alignment 🎯

Generally, interviews are most effective when conducted by someone with comparable or greater experience than the candidate. In one process, however, I was interviewed by engineers with more than ten years less experience than myself across multiple interviews.

Ultimately, I was rejected for “overengineering” - even though my solutions reflected standard practices around maintainability, scalability, and reliability. It became clear that the interviewers simply lacked the experience to evaluate my work properly.

This reveals deeper concerns about the company: a lack of strong technical leadership, poor interview training, and a culture that fears rather than embraces highly skilled individuals. Companies like this often prioritise short-term delivery over long-term quality, leading to technical debt, stagnation, and high turnover. It’s a strong signal that even if hired, a candidate’s expertise would be undervalued - and their potential contributions largely wasted.

Asynchronous Interviews 🎥

Asynchronous interviews can be a great time-saver - up to a point. I’m used to filling out forms during applications or shortly afterwards to provide additional information. However, a new one for me was being sent a service where a hiring manager had recorded questions and asked me to record my responses.

At first, I thought it might be a phishing attempt to gather video samples for deepfakes. It turns out the service is legitimate, but the format still makes little sense. I have to watch their video, and they have to watch mine - very little time is saved overall. Crucially, it removes the opportunity for candidates to ask clarifying questions. Hiring is not a one-way evaluation; candidates are vetting the company too.

Needless to say, I withdrew from the process, and since no human had bothered to communicate directly with me, I didn’t feel obligated to inform them.

Applicant Tracking Systems 🖥️

Anyone job hunting today knows the frustrations of dealing with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). If you don’t include the right keywords, you’re often rejected automatically - but which keywords? They aren’t always explicitly listed in the job posting, and there are social media posts highlighting cases where ATS configurations have mistakenly rejected all applicants due to simple misconfigurations such as typos.

On top of that, AI-powered ATS platforms are emerging. Some promise recruiters they will whittle down to just five candidates; others promise candidates they can rewrite their CVs for better matches. Either way, it’s yet another obstacle between talented people and a real human conversation.

Unrealistic Expectations 📋

This problem is nothing new - companies have long posted unrealistic job requirements, often demanding an entire development team’s worth of skills in a single candidate. The rise of terms like “full stack developer” reflects this trend, as does the evolution from “dev” to “devops” to “devsecops,” each adding yet more areas candidates are expected to master.

While it’s reasonable for developers to understand multiple facets of the field - for both job requirements and personal growth - the ever-expanding checklist has become absurd. We’ve all heard the infamous stories of developers being asked for five years of experience with technologies they themselves only released two years prior.

This kind of expectation signals a fundamental misunderstanding of both hiring and technology itself. It also risks discouraging candidates who would otherwise be excellent fits, but who feel they don’t tick enough boxes to apply. Added to this, many recruiters often lack the technical expertise needed to recognise when skills are transferable, leading to strong candidates being overlooked simply because their experience doesn’t match a predefined checklist.

Lack of Attention to Applications 📝

I always complete the initial application forms thoroughly, even if it means putting “0 years experience” against a skill. However, when a company sends me a second form asking for the same information already provided in my CV or initial responses, it’s a clear signal they aren’t paying attention.

If you can’t consolidate your questions into the first form or read what I’ve already sent, it tells me all I need to know about how communication will be within your company. The hiring process often acts as a preview of an organisation’s internal operations - if communication is disorganised and ineffective at this early stage, it is likely to be even worse once you’re inside. Poor attention to detail and respect for people’s time usually indicates broader problems with culture, leadership, and daily operations.

Excessive Application Questionnaires 📑

At the moment, LinkedIn is awash with applicants. It’s rare to find a job posting that doesn’t already show “more than 100 people have applied.” Yet, I recently noticed two postings that had fewer than ten applicants, despite being live for over three weeks.

Both roles required applicants to complete extensive forms - five and nine pages respectively - mostly repeating information already available in CVs. While I fully support employers gathering relevant details, such exhaustive questioning clearly acts as a major deterrent. Very few candidates are willing to invest that much time upfront.

Some social media posts suggest that this might be an intentional strategy to “weed out” candidates who are “not committed enough.” However, it seems far more likely that it discourages anyone who isn’t utterly desperate for the role.

Excessive barriers don’t attract the best talent - they repel it.

Overly Demanding Take-Home Projects 🛠️

Take-home projects are a common part of the hiring process, and when kept short and focused, they can be a reasonable step towards evaluating candidates’ skills. However, they are still time-consuming - especially for applicants juggling multiple recruitment processes simultaneously.

Too often, these projects demand four or more hours of work, and are poorly defined, with companies offering vague explanations like “we wanted to see how you interpreted it.” This lack of clarity wastes candidates’ time, as they may spend hours building towards objectives that the company isn’t even measuring.

Worse still, I’ve encountered take-home projects that were clearly disguised attempts to get free work - tasks that ended up directly contributing to the company’s products.

Reasonable assessments respect candidates’ time and effort; exploitative ones drive talented people away.

Lack of Transparency in Job Postings 🔍

Some job postings provide little more than a list of technologies, offering no clarity on the actual work involved - sometimes not even mentioning the sector. Many also fail to disclose salary ranges altogether. When they do, the ranges are often extremely broad; £60,000–£100,000 is surprisingly common, and I even spotted one today listing £80,000–£300,000.

While flexibility is important, salary ranges that wide often signal a lack of clarity about the role’s seniority or scope. More often than not, I assume that companies intend to offer salaries at the lower end of the range, with the upper figure serving mainly to attract attention.

Transparency about the role and compensation is essential to building trust with candidates from the outset.

Wrapping Up 🎬

In an industry that often talks about “hiring the best,” it’s surprising how many companies create hiring processes that seem designed to deter them. As candidates, these early experiences offer important insights into how a company values its people. Poor communication, disorganisation, and disrespect for candidates’ time are unlikely to improve after joining. Thoughtful, respectful, and transparent processes aren’t just a nice-to-have - they’re critical signals that a company will treat you well once you’re inside. Choosing where to invest your skills and career should start with choosing organisations that show they value you from the very first interaction.

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