I’ve been helping college students navigate their job searches through a local program. I’ve noticed a continuous dilution of the criteria for what people consi

I’ve been helping college students navigate their job searches through a local program. I’ve noticed a continuous dilution of the criteria for what people consider to be “red flags” in their job searches. When I started doing this, we had to teach people to watch for red flags like unpaid internships, companies with extreme turnover, or jobs trying to demand full-time employment but paying people as contractors without benefits. In recent years, I feel like I spend more time talking people out of simple things they’ve determined are “red flags”, such as job postings that don’t use exactly the right words or interviews that don’t proceed exactly like the student imagines they should. In the past year, I’ve had students tell me that their “red flags” include things like any interview process that takes more than 1 hour total (this is for college grads) or any job that doesn’t pay FAANG level compensation, or any job that requires them to do any on-call for their own work. We spend a lot of time resetting expectations to get students aligned with healthy jobs that won’t take advantage of them, but nevertheless can’t match their unrealistically perfect ideals. This tool has good intentions, but I’m afraid it might contribute to some of these unrealistic expectations about job searching. I often have to remind people that the job posting is never perfect and might be written by someone who doesn’t know how to write well. It might be written by an HR person who was copying things from some bad boilerplate text. You should always be wary of issues in job listings, but if you’re interested in the job it’s worth spending 20-60 minutes communicating with the company to learn more details first. I’ve also noticed a secondary trend wherein some of the most toxic local companies have become very good at signaling: They know how to say all the right things in job listings, sponsor all the right events, and present themselves as exactly the “right” company to work for, but everyone who goes their ends up burned out and depressed by the toxic environment. Ironically, they’ve become experts at recruiting because they’re constantly recruiting to backfill their high turnover rates. What I’m trying to say is: Be on the lookout for issues in your job search, but try to get the full picture before you rule companies out or select an employer.