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Thanks for this reply! Its nice to hear that this is just a question hiring managers ask cause they are there to ask questions. I'm going to keep that in mind

Thanks for this reply! Its nice to hear that this is just a question hiring managers ask cause they are there to ask questions. I'm going to keep that in mind next interview and make that answer the most boring, forgettable answer possible!

akoumjian 11y ago
I'm going to give you conflicting data. When applicants tell me they are looking for a new challenge, or some other non-answer, I wonder if they are just going to flake out and leave our company after 6months or a year. When I ask why people are leaving their current position, I am actually very curious to hear the answer and it colors my impression quite a bit.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Most hiring managers, with the question put directly to them, are going to tell you that they want an honest and in-depth answer about why you left your last job. But you can see from the way this one just answered the question why it's all downside: they are worried that they are missing another opportunity to disqualify you. Stupid as it may sound, even in this market, most hiring managers run screening as a systematic search for disqualifiers. The most important thing to remember here is not my opinion on the validity of the question or the reasons any hiring manager gives you for how important the data is to them. The important thing to remember is this: most candidates don't have interesting reasons for leaving their previous jobs. No matter what any hiring manager tells you about their preferences, the reality is that giving a boring answer really can't disqualify you. Nobody runs hiring processes that select only for people with interesting last job quit stories; they'd reject almost every candidate! But an "interesting" answer certainly can disqualify you.
  - akoumjian 11y ago
    What you're saying is true, a boring answer probably won't disqualify an applicant outright. However, the three or four people that gave answers like "looking for a new challenge" this week certainly didn't make a good positive impression on me. If your objective is to not get disqualified, then it's sound advice. If your objective is to find a job at a company whose culture and expectation match your own, the OP will have better odds with their honest answer.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Hold on. I'm not saying candidates shouldn't qualify culture before accepting jobs. I'm saying they should do that after the job offer, when they have the most leverage and the least to lose.
      - akoumjian 11y ago
        They don't get the job offer if their answers to questions lack depth and personality. In other words, optimizing for not being disqualified is not the same for optimizing for first choice for a position.
        tptacek 11y ago
        Yes, I understand this to be your argument, but I simply do not believe most hiring managers (really: any hiring managers) seriously gauge "depth" and "personality" from the answer to this one question. That's what makes the question such a trap for candidates: it's intrinsically unimportant (the data you pretend it collects simply isn't present for most candidates), but the "wrong" answer can be very harmful. Candidates should simply dodge this question. The more I've thought about this thread, the more cut-and-dried my judgement on this is.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    The flip side is that whilst "contributed everything I can and need a new challenge" is a perfectly good, if uninteresting answer for leaving GenericCo after two years, it's an obvious dodge of the truth for someone keen to leave a notionally key role at GlamourousStartup before options vest. How can that not be a massive red flag with any screener? Edit: There's also the fact that interviewing is a two way screening process, and anyone that thinks is capable of taking offence at homophobia is a "no hire" red flag could and should fail the OP's own personal screening process (assuming they're not working in a country or period of history where few firms aren't actively dismissive towards the concept of homosexuality). Sure, over-elaborating on how bad the place was to work (any competent interviewer won't press for details) is a red flag, as is appearing to be more desperate to leave than interested in the job on offer. But "they're an excellent company in many respects, but I feel I'd be much happier in an environment where I didn't feel I was constantly having to turn a blind eye to several coworkers' derogatory remarks about minorities" doesn't sound like it should alarm anyone the OP might actually want to work for
    - tptacek 11y ago
      No, we interviewed lots of people from "GlamorousStartup", and I can't remember hearing a single negative story. In our warm-up calls, we did ask some things about previous jobs (mostly to calibrate how much help we'd be offering for the technical interview). It's just not true that a boring answer to this question is a "massive red flag". That's terrible advice to give.
      - notahacker 11y ago
        Doesn't this depend a lot on when they leave? I'm assuming you didn't rush to hire people that gave "contributed everything I can and need a new challenge" as a reason for leaving a non-contractor position after a few months. The OP - who understandably hasn't provided many details - may be in a situation where a bland answer doesn't sound like an obvious lie, but it's evident from the way the question is phrased that they fear it might be. Even if they'd in fact been there for 15 months at a run-of-the-mill Series A startup so a bland answer was pretty likely to be the truth, would you have been more likely to have screened them out if they'd answered "I'd prefer a working environment where people weren't constantly making homophobic comments"?
  - toosuccess 11y ago
    Yeah, its not even about having that disqualify me, I'm just trying to keep any information about the social conditions of my current role quiet so I don't burn any bridges. I'm unfortunately not in SV and the tech community is much smaller here. The startups founders are fairly well connected with other founders and I don't want it to become a they said/they said that gets me black listed.
  - yuhong 11y ago
    Thinking about it, this means that telling the story publicly is better than telling it privately to the wrong people, because you can get job offers by telling it publicly, after which you can assume they already saw your blog post and so answering the question will not give them any more information. That is IMO the best solution to this problem for candidates. On the other side, I wonder if the HR process of slotting candidates into fixed number of positions don't help. It might make sense for factory workers, but for programming or even IT? This is one reason BTW why I believe anti-discrimination laws are ineffective.

akoumjian 11y ago

I'm going to give you conflicting data. When applicants tell me they are looking for a new challenge, or some other non-answer, I wonder if they are just going to flake out and leave our company after 6months or a year. When I ask why people are leaving their current position, I am actually very curious to hear the answer and it colors my impression quite a bit.

tptacek 11y ago
Most hiring managers, with the question put directly to them, are going to tell you that they want an honest and in-depth answer about why you left your last job. But you can see from the way this one just answered the question why it's all downside: they are worried that they are missing another opportunity to disqualify you. Stupid as it may sound, even in this market, most hiring managers run screening as a systematic search for disqualifiers. The most important thing to remember here is not my opinion on the validity of the question or the reasons any hiring manager gives you for how important the data is to them. The important thing to remember is this: most candidates don't have interesting reasons for leaving their previous jobs. No matter what any hiring manager tells you about their preferences, the reality is that giving a boring answer really can't disqualify you. Nobody runs hiring processes that select only for people with interesting last job quit stories; they'd reject almost every candidate! But an "interesting" answer certainly can disqualify you.
- akoumjian 11y ago
  What you're saying is true, a boring answer probably won't disqualify an applicant outright. However, the three or four people that gave answers like "looking for a new challenge" this week certainly didn't make a good positive impression on me. If your objective is to not get disqualified, then it's sound advice. If your objective is to find a job at a company whose culture and expectation match your own, the OP will have better odds with their honest answer.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Hold on. I'm not saying candidates shouldn't qualify culture before accepting jobs. I'm saying they should do that after the job offer, when they have the most leverage and the least to lose.
    - akoumjian 11y ago
      They don't get the job offer if their answers to questions lack depth and personality. In other words, optimizing for not being disqualified is not the same for optimizing for first choice for a position.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        Yes, I understand this to be your argument, but I simply do not believe most hiring managers (really: any hiring managers) seriously gauge "depth" and "personality" from the answer to this one question. That's what makes the question such a trap for candidates: it's intrinsically unimportant (the data you pretend it collects simply isn't present for most candidates), but the "wrong" answer can be very harmful. Candidates should simply dodge this question. The more I've thought about this thread, the more cut-and-dried my judgement on this is.
- notahacker 11y ago
  The flip side is that whilst "contributed everything I can and need a new challenge" is a perfectly good, if uninteresting answer for leaving GenericCo after two years, it's an obvious dodge of the truth for someone keen to leave a notionally key role at GlamourousStartup before options vest. How can that not be a massive red flag with any screener? Edit: There's also the fact that interviewing is a two way screening process, and anyone that thinks is capable of taking offence at homophobia is a "no hire" red flag could and should fail the OP's own personal screening process (assuming they're not working in a country or period of history where few firms aren't actively dismissive towards the concept of homosexuality). Sure, over-elaborating on how bad the place was to work (any competent interviewer won't press for details) is a red flag, as is appearing to be more desperate to leave than interested in the job on offer. But "they're an excellent company in many respects, but I feel I'd be much happier in an environment where I didn't feel I was constantly having to turn a blind eye to several coworkers' derogatory remarks about minorities" doesn't sound like it should alarm anyone the OP might actually want to work for
  - tptacek 11y ago
    No, we interviewed lots of people from "GlamorousStartup", and I can't remember hearing a single negative story. In our warm-up calls, we did ask some things about previous jobs (mostly to calibrate how much help we'd be offering for the technical interview). It's just not true that a boring answer to this question is a "massive red flag". That's terrible advice to give.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      Doesn't this depend a lot on when they leave? I'm assuming you didn't rush to hire people that gave "contributed everything I can and need a new challenge" as a reason for leaving a non-contractor position after a few months. The OP - who understandably hasn't provided many details - may be in a situation where a bland answer doesn't sound like an obvious lie, but it's evident from the way the question is phrased that they fear it might be. Even if they'd in fact been there for 15 months at a run-of-the-mill Series A startup so a bland answer was pretty likely to be the truth, would you have been more likely to have screened them out if they'd answered "I'd prefer a working environment where people weren't constantly making homophobic comments"?
- toosuccess 11y ago
  Yeah, its not even about having that disqualify me, I'm just trying to keep any information about the social conditions of my current role quiet so I don't burn any bridges. I'm unfortunately not in SV and the tech community is much smaller here. The startups founders are fairly well connected with other founders and I don't want it to become a they said/they said that gets me black listed.
- yuhong 11y ago
  Thinking about it, this means that telling the story publicly is better than telling it privately to the wrong people, because you can get job offers by telling it publicly, after which you can assume they already saw your blog post and so answering the question will not give them any more information. That is IMO the best solution to this problem for candidates. On the other side, I wonder if the HR process of slotting candidates into fixed number of positions don't help. It might make sense for factory workers, but for programming or even IT? This is one reason BTW why I believe anti-discrimination laws are ineffective.