The Savvy Manager

Weeding through job candidates is never easy. Not only are you trying to match the person’s skills and experience to the job, you’re also looking for other clues that could give you an indication of what you might be dealing with down the road. Here are six red flags that scream “Don’t hire!”

Perhaps it’s the hardest, but sweetest managerial job on Earth: being a mom. She got the job with no tricky interview questions, her pay for what she does doesn’t jingle in her pocket and the job never ends, even in her sleep. As a boss, you likely have no employee that tests your patience and the tensile strength of your sanity the way a child does to his or her mother.

There is no shortage of pet peeves. We all have them. And as managers we have a list (or perhaps a staff full) of them. Yes, these are irritating employee types. These are employees who have done nothing egregious enough to get fired. They just make your days seem just a bit longer, and your job just that much harder.

A simple note to bosses: Treat employees right. Your workers want honesty and integrity from you. They expect fairness. They want to trust and be trusted by you. They want to respect you, but they want it in return. They also need you to be dependable. Those concepts can build a solid workplace foundation, but as one supervisor learned recently, they’re so fragile.