Not all jobs have a great and productive workplace. There are certain signs that we need to watch out for to avoid a toxic culture.
Forbes has shared an open letter from Todd, a job applicant, regarding his experience with an employer. His wife's comment about him talking in his sleep made him realize he would have hated the job.
There were signs on all three interviews that the company hire and fire people without giving a second thought. Every person he met said some variation of it being a tough workplace and they hire really smart people.
In Todd's experience, he believed that being smart has nothing to do with putting up with abuse. People he met at the interviews all seem to be putting up with a lot of abuse. He admitted that he was desperate to get a new job that he initially ignored the signals.
The first sign was when he met someone who just started in the HR department a week before she interviewed him. It was her first time to interview anyone and she didn't have any interview training. Todd said she didn't even know which questions were lawful or unlawful to ask candidates.
Second was when he asked his prospective hiring manager what happened to the last person in the job. He was told they weren't up to the manager's standards. Todd said that she did not seem to see the failure of that person as a learning experience for herself at all and she told him that she fired the woman, which Todd found wasn't very professional.
Lastly, they blew off the date when they promised to let him know about the offer and they routinely ignored his emails and voice mails. They also got their basic facts wrong and made clerical mistakes beyond what any business person was used to. Todd said the only reason he had three interviews was because his recruiter kept hounding them to move the process forward.
Todd saw the company had a toxic culture and the recruiter was disgusted with his client. Another candidate dropped out.
