Red flags in a conversation with a recruiter, from TakeOffer expert Inna Langleiben:

  1. The recruiter runs the meeting as if you obviously dream of getting this job and it is only a matter of which candidate the company will choose: they leave no time for your questions, interrupt you, and so on.
  2. The recruiter cannot answer your questions clearly and precisely. Let me say right away that I mean questions that are not too deeply tied to the specifics of the team's work. A recruiter works with different teams and cannot know everything in depth! But if even standard, general questions are a struggle, it is a sign of unprofessionalism, and at later stages it makes sense to pay attention to how professional the people working at the company are overall.
  3. The recruiter crosses your boundaries by asking about things unrelated to the job and your professional qualities, such as your personal life, marital status, hobbies, political views, and so on. That leaves you choosing between sharing information you are not comfortable sharing, or declining and risking the impression you make on the recruiter. If you ask me, I would recommend finding a "golden mean," for example by limiting yourself to a short, formal answer. That way you do not refuse to answer, but you also do not reveal anything you are uncomfortable with. By the way, this may be a sign of the corporate culture. In more family-style companies it is normal to share this kind of information, and if you as a candidate are comfortable with it, then everything is fine and no boundaries were crossed!
  4. The recruiter cannot explain how the candidate selection process for the vacancy is organized: which stages are planned and in what order, and whether any assessments besides interviews are used. This may mean either that the search has only just begun and you are one of the first candidates, or that the selection process is not structured. The latter may mean that other processes in the company are not structured either, so it is worth looking closer at this in later conversations.
  5. At the end of the interview, the recruiter does not mention next steps or timing and simply says goodbye. If the timeline for feedback is unclear, it may point to difficult communication between the recruiter and the hiring manager(s), or to the recruiter being overloaded (and unless that is due to explosive company growth, it is a very negative signal), or to the same lack of a partner-like attitude toward the candidate that I mentioned earlier. In any case, none of these options speaks in the company's favor.