Red Flags in Interviews — From Both Sides

The Interviewer Was 20 Minutes Late

Three years ago, during a job change. Online interview — the interviewer showed up 20 minutes late. "Meeting ran over, sorry." Kept their camera off the entire time. Questions made it obvious they hadn't read my resume. "Have you worked with React?" — when the first line of my resume says "React, 3 years."

They offered me the job. I declined. How a company treats candidates in interviews isn't far from how they treat employees after hiring.

Company-Side Red Flags

Overemphasizing "we don't do overtime." Companies that actually don't work overtime don't need to mention it. If "great work-life balance" comes up three or more times during the interview, they're being defensive because the balance is bad. (In my experience, that correlation holds about 87% of the time.)

Zero technical questions in a developer interview. An hour of personality questions followed by "you'll learn the tech when you join" means they don't value technical skills. Or nobody there can ask technical questions.

"We're like a family here." (This is a well-known red flag in Korean corporate culture too.) "Family atmosphere" usually translates to "you'll feel guilty leaving on time."

"We'll raise your salary later." Later never comes. If it's not in writing, verbal promises mean nothing.

Candidate-Side Red Flags

These are things I noticed as an interviewer.

"I can do anything." That's not confidence — it signals not knowing your own strengths. "I'm strong in state management and performance optimization" builds way more trust than "I can do everything."

Extensive trash-talking about a previous company. A comment or two, understandable. But 15 minutes of bashing your old team lead makes me think "they'll talk about us this way too."

Questions only about compensation and benefits. Asking about salary is completely normal. But if there are zero questions about the tech stack or team structure — only "is there overtime pay?" and "how many vacation days?" — it signals disinterest in the actual work.

My Own Mistake

I got a technical question I didn't know the answer to and faked it. "Oh yeah, I've done some of that..." then rambled incoherently. The interviewer absolutely knew. "I'm not sure about that, but I have experience with something similar" would have been so much better.

Now as an interviewer, I much prefer candidates who say "I don't know" honestly. People who can admit what they don't know tend to grow faster on a team.

Interviews Are Bidirectional

It took three job changes to internalize this. An interview isn't a company evaluating you. You're evaluating the company too. It's data collection time for the question "do I want to work here?"

Does the interviewer show up on time? Are questions prepared? Do they give specific answers about team culture? All data points.

When getting hired becomes the goal, you start ignoring red flags. The "get in first, figure it out later" mindset becomes regret three months in. Those three months of wasted time are worth more than a $350 pair of AirPods.