It’s not as cut and dry. It is perfectly fine to say you left a company because what you were looking for and what the company was doing didn’t align. It’s especially important if you left quickly because you don’t want people to think you were let go. You don’t want to gratuitously badmouth a former employer but you don’t have to defend them either.
When I have interviewed people who complain about their current or last job and tell stories about how the work is shit and the management sucks I can't help but get the impression that they are a difficult employee. Maybe that's not true, but without knowing anything else it's easy to get that idea. And I would prefer the candidate focus on what they are bringing to my project and team rather than than talking about how their current/last job sucked.
A decade or so ago I worked for a large-ish publishing company. We were hiring a couple of programmers and I was one of two senior people assigned to do initial interviews. One candidate came through a recruiter, looked good on paper, and he had several years of relevant experience at a major publisher (Playboy) using similar technologies. During the interview I asked why he left that job -- he had a several month unemployed gap on his resume. He said he didn't like working in the "porn" industry. I said "You must have known what Playboy publishes when you took that job." Then he launched into a long explanation of how he didn't get along with his manager and how some of the other people on his team were slackers and so on. We didn't hire him -- maybe he was right about the work environment but the whole exchange left a bad taste for me and the other senior doing the interviews.
Bottom line: Prepare for the question "Why did you leave your last job?" (Or "Why are you thinking about leaving your job?") and have an explanation ready that doesn't reflect badly on you, makes sense, and doesn't require badmouthing the last place.
It is not unprofessional to end up in a situation where what you are asked to do is not in line with what you want for your career. Employers rarely put their employees career development first.
Note that I agree with you that ranting and needlessly badmouthing a company never reflects positively on someone. I just disagree that you should always be positive.
> Then he launched into a long explanation of how he didn't get along with his manager and how some of the other people on his team were slackers and so on.
That’s because venting frustration never looks good during an interview. But it would probably have been fine to say that as he was getting older, maybe he had a daughter, maybe he had some kind of epiphany, he was starting to feel uneasy about the porn industry and that it affected is ability to fit in the team. That’s not positive but that’s shifting the perspective from blaming other to a change in yourself which is a legitimate reason to search a new job.
In the same way, I wouldn’t necessarily look badly on someone who left a small company after four months and explained to me that they are actually looking for a place with more established processes because at their point in their career they are looking to learn the best practices and not put them in place from scratch and they misjudged the state of the company they worked for. That’s basically telling you were working for an immature but you shifting the discussion towards you and what you are looking for.
When someone is looking for a new job the prospective employer understands implicitly that the candidate is not completely happy with their current situation (or else they wouldn't be looking to leave). Every workplace has its share of dysfunction. Usually the reason is "more money" but candidates will rarely come out and say that.
By the way, I didn't write that "you should always be positive." I wrote that bad-mouthing your former employer is never a good idea when talking to a prospective future employer, and you should have an answer to the inevitable "Why are you looking to leave?" or "Why did you leave?" questions that doesn't involve saying "That job sucks."
As someone who has done a good share of interviewing and hiring in my career I disagree somewhat.
The answer you gave (what you were looking for and what the company was doing didn't align) seems like a good neutral answer, but it immediately brings some questions to mind:
1. Did you not see this misalignment when you interviewed for that last job? Did they deceive you about the environment and work?
2. What exactly are you looking for? If I ask that question after someone told me they quit because of a mismatch I expect the candidate to tell me clearly what they are looking for. That creates a couple of risks. What if the candidate tells me what they're looking for and I interpret that as demanding and fussy? Does the candidate think their personal goals and wants are the most important thing in an employment relationship? Did the candidate take that last job out of desperation despite seeing the warnings, or did they not do the research that would have made the mismatch obvious? Unless the last employer changed everything radically in the last six months I would wonder about how the candidate got themselves into that situation in the first place. I would excuse that for a junior but a senior person should know what they're walking into.
3. My concerns are bringing someone on who aligns with business priorities, adds value, and gets along with the rest of the employees. I want to respect that every candidate has their own goals and preferences but there's a fine line beyond which those start to seem like demands, or maybe exceptions. For example a lot of people now are asking to work remotely before they have demonstrated they can produce anything or function as part of a team. I may not be against remote work but to have that presented as a requirement or something I have to "align" my team with may be too much at the interview stage.
I won't say I've never talked myself into taking a job at a dysfunctional company (I have, more than once), but that's a mistake I need to take responsibility for. If I need to explain that in an interview I will be very careful about how I present that. When a prospective employer hears an explanation that amounts to "They lied to me" or "That place sucks" they imagine you feeling the same way in six months at their company. The more you talk bad about the last job the more it will seem like you got fired or encouraged to move on, which is a bad signal to give to a prospective future employer.
Are you for real? Interview is too early to ask about remote work?
Look at it another way: During early interviews you may be competing with a lot of other candidates. Once you get to the short list, or have an offer, the employer has invested time in you and has made a decision to bring you on. That's when you are in a good position to negotiate salary, benefits, and perks like working remotely. If you get surprised at that point because the company won't negotiate with you on your needs and requirements you probably didn't research the job carefully enough.
If you're a senior-level programmer, or someone with experience in any field, and you get to an in-person interview without knowing if the company permits remote working you didn't do your homework.
If I were the candidate, I'd walk out of that interview. No one needs to work for someone this judgy.
> Unless the last employer changed everything radically in the last six months I would wonder about how the candidate got themselves into that situation in the first place.
Have you never bought a product you thought would be great that turned out to be a piece of crap?
Companies make money by selling themselves, and the sales process doesn't stop before hiring employees. Sometimes companies look great from the outside and you can't know what things are really like unless you either start working there or have an insider contact. I've tried figuring out what the workplace and its methodologies are like through the interview process, and it turns out current employees never want to say anything that makes them look bad and middle management dodges questions or sometimes outright lies.
> Does the candidate think their personal goals and wants are the most important thing in an employment relationship?
Yeah, they are, because if those aren't getting satisfied by the employment relationship, we look elsewhere. Why should any employee put the employer's needs over their own?
> I want to respect that every candidate has their own goals and preferences but there's a fine line beyond which those start to seem like demands, or maybe exceptions.
If you don't like their demands, you have the choice to meet those demands or let them go. The employee has the exact same choice. Either your demands are reasonable or they can let you go. This is the most professional perspective because anything beyond that enters the territory of slave driving.
> I may not be against remote work but to have that presented as a requirement or something I have to "align" my team with may be too much at the interview stage.
That's the entire point of an interview! Why would you consider that "too much"? That's crazy to me. If you aren't willing to negotiate or hear what potential candidates are looking for, why should anyone work for you?
Interviewing is all about judging, that's what both parties should be doing -- making judgments before committing to a potentially expensive and significant relationship. A person who walks into the interview with a list of personal demands and needs (yes, I have experienced that) makes a different impression than a person who is ready to negotiate their desires while taking the employer's needs and priorities into account. How that negotiation goes depends on relative strengths of each side's position. A senior developer in this job market may be in a very strong position. Someone trying to get a job as a retail manager may not have such a good hand.
I have interviewed people for senior-level jobs who didn't even know what the company did -- they hadn't done any research at all as far as I could tell. It may be hard to learn about internal processes and team dynamics in advance, but it's not impossible, especially now with so much information online. Most people won't commit to a restaurant meal or a pair of shoes these days before reading pages of reviews, so there's no excuse for not researching a potential employer. A perceptive person can ask questions and gather information in the interview process, though it's better to walk in the door with as much information as you can get. If the employer is evasive or secretive that itself is a red flag.
> If you don't like their demands, you have the choice to meet those demands or let them go. The employee has the exact same choice. Either your demands are reasonable or they can let you go. This is the most professional perspective because anything beyond that enters the territory of slave driving.
That's a false dichotomy. Both sides have room to negotiate. I may ask for full remote, the employer may counter with three days a week. I could quit at that point, or the employer could let me go, but that's probably not the outcome either side wants. What one side thinks reasonable may not seem reasonable to the other, which is why you negotiate. Having to compromise a little is not slave driving, it's a normal part of any relationship, including an employer-employee relationship.
The point of the interview is to get an offer. The candidate and the employer should have done their homework before getting to face-to-face interviews, so by that time neither side should be getting any big surprises. I wouldn't wait for an interview to find out that the company doesn't allow remote, I would already know that. If I'm committing my time and effort to interviewing I already have some idea what the company will and will not consider reasonable, so I'm going to wait until I have an offer before negotiating demands, or even the salary and perks.
