Not All Red Flags Are Equal

Suzanne Lucas walks through a fellow business writer's rogue's gallery of unhireable types of job interviewees.

Lucas finds that, while she fully agrees that three of these types of job applicants are truly bad, others range from still worth more thought to outright promising.

Two of these come in that order near the beginning of her walkthrough. She uses the original nomenclature ahead of her thoughts:

2. The "What's in It for Me?" Guy

People who are too focused on what's in it for them can be problematic. But let's be honest. If you don't have something to offer your job candidates, why on earth would they want to work for you? If you can't offer a challenge, growth, and great benefits, you're not going to get the best people. People don't work for you out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to work for you because it will make them better off.

3. The Sports-Analogy [Jerk]

[Steve] Cody, apparently, gets people who use sports analogies because he climbs mountains. He hates the sports analogy. Okey-dokey. I'm not big on them either, but if someone uses them on a cover letter for a job, it means they've done research and know a little bit about him. That, to me, is a gold star. Refusing to consider someone because they use one tired phrase means you're not looking at the whole person.

If Lucas herself didn't teach me that each person in a job interview should be probing the other, she has done well to reinforce that lesson for me over the years.

This entire column is an exercise in doing just this. Of course a job isn't a charity. But it is a trade, and both sides should be asking about the proposed benefits and obligations. And, yes. Get past your pet peeves and prejudices and look at the whole person.

Or the whole job, which is what none of the three types they both agreed on -- the Drama Queen, the Improvisation King, and the Mobile-Device Maven -- blatantly don't even start to do.

The most interesting disagreement for me came first on the list. The kid with the helicopter parent seems like a slam-dunk to reject -- until Lucas reminds us that the kid might want to get out from under that, and that there are ways to get an evaluation of what that person is like when away from a parent.

-- CAV