6 Red Flags That Keep Good Candidates from Getting Hired

Most organizations know the dire consequences associated with hiring the wrong person for a job: disrupted team dynamics, underperformance, missed opportunities, turnover costs, and more.

As a result, those involved in the recruitment process tend to be highly attuned to signs that a candidate might not be the right fit. Through an exercise we conducted with 350 HBS Executive Education participants (top and senior leaders from one of the 500 largest companies in Europe, a global consumer goods group, and more than 40 U.S. businesses in a variety of industries) we identified six primary categories of concern: poor self-awareness, lack of preparation, poor manners/lack of professionalism, excessive self-interest, problematic relationships with past/present employers, and a history of job-hopping. (Note: This research focused on the in-person stage of the hiring process, not on online applications or AI screenings.)

Successful job seekers must avoid raising any of these red flags. Meanwhile, organizations must ensure that they are picking up on real warning signs but also not rejecting good candidates over avoidable miscommunications. On both sides, this requires employing three Cs:

• Clarity: Know what you want and what you offer
• Courtesy: Treat others with respect, professionalism, and kindness
• Coherence: Tell a coherent story about your decisions/successes/failures and how they connect to the present moment and future plans

Here is some more specific advice for individuals and hiring teams in each red-flag category:

Poor Self-Awareness     

This category of failure, including inadequate self-appraisal and inappropriately aggressive self-promotion, was the most frequently cited by executives. Far too many candidates, even for higher-level posts, cannot articulate their past accomplishments, explain why they are a good fit for the job they seek, or express their goals for the future. Others indulge in boasting, name dropping, and a focus on status cues rather than accomplishments or skills. How can individuals and organizations overcome this challenge?

Advice for candidates

• Assess your skills on a granular level. Where are you rock solid, where do you have potential, where are you developing, and which skill sets are you unlikely to ever develop?
• How do your skills play out in different contexts? Where/how/with whom do you do your best work and in what situations are you weaker?
• Prepare specific anecdotes from your career to illustrate your skills/decision-making style.
• Give credit to other people, such as team members and mentors. You are not solely responsible for a team’s success. Knowing what strengths other people bring to the table, and showing your ability to learn from them, shows that you are both clear-sighted and a good team member.
• Own your mistakes. Everyone has failures. What did you learn from yours? Being able to speak to these points bolsters your credibility and shows you as someone who can adapt and learn.
• Project “confident humility.” This may require practice, as habits around self-presentation are deep-rooted. Do you have a tendency to default to self-deprecation? Self-promotion? Deflecting praise—or stonewalling criticism? (If you aren’t sure, a trusted friend or colleague may offer insight.)

Advice for hiring teams

• Consider de-emphasizing interviews, particularly for jobs that do not have a strong interpersonal component. Skills and job knowledge testing, for example, are highly predictive of future job success.
• Conduct structured interviews. A 2022 meta-analysis found that structured interviews were more predictive of future job performance than any other type of selection measure, while unstructured interviews proved to have almost no predictive power.
• Train interviewers to follow up. “Structured” does not mean following a script with no deviations. Interviewers should know how and when to ask follow-up questions, dig for detail, and push for balance when a candidate is overly focused on a particular viewpoint.
• Make the interview a realistic job preview. What kind of environment—both physical and mental—will the candidate be working in? Will they need to run virtual meetings? Take clients to lunch and dinner? Work in an atmosphere with multiple distractions? The more the interview reflects the actual job, the more both hiring manager and candidate can assess fit.

Lack of Preparation

The second most frequently mentioned red flag was lack of preparation: “not knowing basics of company or product” and/or lack of knowledge about the job being applied for. (This corroborates our 2010 article in which “lack of research” on a candidate’s part was identified as the top reason that job changes were unsuccessful.)

Advice for candidates

• Do research. Online resources—Glassdoor, company websites, forum and business publications—make this easier than ever. Make sure you also look at your network and connect with contacts at the company or in the industry to gain insights.
• Prepare questions in advance. Go into the interview understanding what you know and do not know about industry basics, company profile and culture, job tasks, and success metrics. Prepare questions about the specific role, the department or function, the organization, and the industry or market.

Advice for hiring teams

• Know what “preparation” means. What should candidates know? Where should they look for information? Clarity and informational resources will make a good impression on high-potential candidates, as well as making it clear which ones will not take even the simplest initiative.
• Be clear on what will happen during the interview/evaluation process. What kinds of questions will candidates be asked? When will they have a chance to ask questions? “Equip candidates with the tools to prepare without over-coaching them,” as one group of executive education participants put it.

Poor Manners/Lack of Professionalism

Inappropriate behavior during an interview raises two concerns: one, that the candidate is not taking the interview seriously; two, that this is what “taking something seriously” looks like for this person, which means they cannot be trusted to represent the company.

This category included lateness (specifically, lateness that is not explained or apologized for), unprofessional attire, “inappropriate Zoom backgrounds,” and resume typos or errors. Also mentioned in this category were candidates who were too informal and showed a “lack of interview decorum/professionalism,” often manifested as “assumed familiarity” or oversharing. Other red-flag behaviors included trying to take control of the interview by “not following interview protocols,” “reverse-interviewing,” or evading questions.

Advice for candidates

• Remember that perfection is not required. Focus on relaxing enough to be prepared, present, attentive, and open.
• Give yourself plenty of time to prepare—plan out your attire, technological needs, grooming, transportation (overestimate the amount of time it will take you to get to the interview), and any documents or work products you plan to bring.
• Before the interview, do breathing exercises or a brief meditation.
• During the interview, remember to breathe. Take the time to listen fully to questions and “slow down when you speak.” Don’t be afraid to ask for clarification or take a moment to compose a reply.
• If you make a mistake or faux pas, apologize. Handling a mistake well can show an interviewer a lot about you. (In psychology, this is known as the pratfall effect. No need to purposely spill coffee on yourself, but handling awkwardness, miscommunication, or a technological mishap with grace can be a definite plus.)

Advice for hiring teams

• Be explicit about expected manners/dress code.
• Set the tone by treating candidates with respect, both in terms of the process overall (clear communication, timely responses) and interpersonally. Treat candidates like valued visitors—greet them, introduce them, offer them refreshments.
• If a candidate behaves inappropriately during an interview, point this out and see how they respond.

Excessive Self-Interest

This red flag refers to a “what is in it for me” attitude centered on personal gain e.g. “trying to make demands/requirements immediately vs. understanding the role and asking so they can learn what’s needed.” Hiring managers understand that compensation and other benefits are a concern; the red flag isn’t in asking about them but about doing so immediately, aggressively, and/or to the exclusion of other concerns.

Advice for candidates

• Advance preparation can give you basic information on total rewards. Hold your questions back until later in the interview process.
• Be aware of what your priorities are in terms of rewards and/or aspects of the job. Know what you would want to negotiate for.
• Negotiate after the offer. Candidates overestimate “their likelihood of jeopardizing a job offer if they negotiate,” our executive education participants told us. Seven separate studies with more than 3,000 participants revealed that offers were upheld 94% of the time after the candidate negotiated.

Advice for hiring teams

• Posting the job’s salary range will provide candidates with the information they want in advance.
• Don’t ask for salary history, which suggests to candidates that they will have to fight to get their desired compensation.
• Let candidates know when the salary conversation will happen.

Problematic Relations with Past/Present Employers

How a person views and speaks of former and present employers can be revealing. A candidate who appears to be looking for an escape hatch more than anything else—running from the current company rather than running to the new company”—looks like a bad risk. “Willingness to leave current job in less than two weeks” and “No transition plan for current role” were both noted as flags. Badmouthing people—teammates, bosses, etc.—was also frequently mentioned.

Advice for candidates

• Do not vent or denigrate previous or current employers. Speaking unprofessionally or behaving inconsiderately toward them indicates to a hiring manager that this is how you will behave toward their organization someday.
• Try to frame negative experiences in terms of situational factors rather than blaming individuals.
• When possible, frame negative experiences in terms of why (e.g., not just “my team was horrible” but “this is where I learned why psychological safety is important”).
• If you are in a bad situation, double down on pre-interview research, both to ensure that you are not making an ill-considered move, and to show your genuine interest.

Advice for hiring teams

• Ask for negatives up front and explicitly: “What don’t you like about current job?” Some candidates may feel an implicit pressure to be relentlessly positive, and this will allow them to express the full picture, secure that they are following the protocol of the interview.
• Push for details on negative stories. Having a run of bad luck is not a red flag, but not learning anything from it is. So is a candidate’s tendency to put blame entirely on themselves, or entirely on other people or circumstances.

Job Hopping

A record of “serially leaving companies every two years” was the last area of concern among the executives we surveyed, though it was only seen as a problem if there were no “good explanations” or “valid reasons” for the moves. (When we offered people the option of “yellow flag,” this is how job hopping was categorized.)

Advice for candidates

• Understand why you have changed jobs frequently. Craft a clear narrative, especially if jobs are significantly different in terms of function, industry, company size, etc.
• Be prepared to explain to interviewers how you expect your experience at their firm to be different.

Advice for organizations

• Ask about job hopping or resume gaps directly rather than making assumptions.
• Consider what is/are the biggest risks of hiring a potential job hopper into a given position. Investing in them without an ROI? The possibility that they will leave for a competitor? Concern over general churn rate? Consider if these risks can be addressed with other policies (e.g., noncompetes, cohort hiring, retention bonuses, contracts).

While many of these recommendations might seem like common sense, the executives we spoke to told us that they’re not often uniformly practiced. Whether you’re a candidate for a role or the manager doing the hiring, it’s critically important to focus on the three Cs: clarity, courtesy, and coherence.