10 Things You Should Avoid Revealing In A Job Interview - Interview Tips

• You landed a big interview. Congratulations!
• Avoid common interview mistakes to impress the interview team.
• Be cautious about revealing personal details, reasons for leaving, and salary history.
• Make sure to communicate with clarity and confidence.
• Check out resources for more career guidance.

You landed a big interview. Congratulations! But now we need to hit it out of the park. And as you head into the interview process, I don't want you to make these common interview mistakes. So in this video, I'm going to share with you some things that you might not want to reveal in your interview.

Hi everybody, it's Brian from a Life after layoff. Today I want to talk to you a little bit more about interviewing, specifically what you shouldn't reveal if you're talking to a recruiter or a hiring manager. But before we get too far into it, if you're interested in more career-related content just like this, directly from a corporate recruiter, make sure you hit that subscribe button. You might also want to hit that notification bell so you don't miss any future content.

Obviously, with my background in recruiting, I've interviewed a lot of people and I've had some pretty interesting interactions over the years. There's some common things that I've heard job interviewers reveal in interviews, that's probably not in their best interest. So I decided to put together this list of things that you shouldn't reveal to your interviewer, even though they might seem relatively innocent at the surface.

Because after all, interviewing can feel a bit like navigating a minefield. One wrong step can end you up in the no pile, and we certainly want to avoid that. So I'm going to give you a list of things that you should avoid revealing. And hopefully, you're not making too many of these mistakes right now.

First thing that you should avoid revealing is too many personal facts about yourself. This is often a symptom of somebody who is overly nervous in their interviews. Somebody who's just flat out long-winded. And neither one of those are really good traits to have if you're gonna try to impress the interview team to convince them that you're the right fit for the job.

And if you've ever dealt professionally with somebody who's a long-winded person, you know how difficult that can be to deal with. The issue isn't so much that they're unfriendly, but they either overshare or they lack emotional intelligence. And the reason why this one's an issue is because employers will link your ability to articulate yourself to how you would perform in a business setting or in a business meeting.

So if you're somebody that is in sales, for example, and you're sitting in front of a client and you're going on and on and on, and you see a glazed look in their face, you're probably not going to seal the deal. So they'll absolutely use that as an indicator that you can convey your thoughts and messages in a clear and concise way. So if you're somebody that tends to be a little long-winded, hopefully, somebody's been nice enough to you in your career to pull you aside and say, "Hey, you need to wrap it up a little quicker."

But generally speaking, two to three minutes in your interview answers is all. Conversely, if you're oversharing because you're nervous, it sounds like you need to practice a little bit more.

Another possible danger, and could be a benefit too, I guess, of oversharing too much personal information, is the person who is receiving that information is going to potentially use that as a bias for or against you. So if you shared some hobby that you were really interested in, but the person who you were sharing it with didn't appreciate the hobby, you might end up losing them. At worst, they might actually start judging you for it.

There's also the chance that you could share something that they're really interested in and you could have an icebreaker of some sort. But in general, I would avoid sharing anything that's particularly personal. Just keep it strictly related to the job at hand.

The next thing I would avoid revealing in your job interview is the real reason why you're leaving your current employer. Before you jump to conclusions, I'm not suggesting that you should lie about why you're leaving, but you might not want to share the entire truth, especially if you're trying to escape a very boring employer, or you had a boss that you didn't like, or the company treated you poorly, or whatever reason you might have.

Think long and hard about how you want to message and package that up, because inevitably an employer is probably gonna judge based on that. So if you come in and say, "My boss was terrible, I didn't like working for them, there was nothing good about them, we butted heads, and I needed to get out," an employer might hear, "You're difficult to work with. You potentially could be a problem for us as well." Too much of a red flag and we're going to avoid it.

Similarly, if you're feeling very bored and you share that the job didn't challenge you very much, an employer might say, "We're a little disappointed by that because if you were truly a go-getter, you would go out and find more interesting work to do to enrich the job that you had."

As a recruiter who's hired thousands of people and had lots of hiring managers give me feedback, that is some of the stuff that I have actually heard. So my advice to you on this one is to figure out why it is that you're really truly leaving and figure out a way to articulate that in a way that doesn't come across as threatening to an employer.

Taking a step further, I've had people overshare their career plans with me and it actually comes back to really bite them. Because inevitably you're probably gonna be asked, "What are your career plans? Maybe where do you see yourself in five years?" Some variation of that type of question.

And what we're looking for is do you have commitment to this type of career path? Is it something that interests you long-term? Do you have the ability to grow in this role, potentially get promoted, etc.? We kind of want to know what we have with the candidate. And when you come in and you say, "Well, my five-year plan is to start a business," or if you say, "I'm switching careers after five years; I'm gonna be somewhere completely different," it's generally not going to be looked at very positively at all. In fact, that could be a deal breaker for a lot of employers.

Because when you're interviewing for a certain job type and you're saying you want to start a business that's completely unrelated, basically what that's telling the employer is you're not passionate about the type of work that you're interviewing for. The name of the game is we have to show or convey a level of passion for what we're doing if you want an employer, or in particular a hiring manager, to feel good about your candidacy.

So if you do have plans to start a business or make a career shift on some level, I would certainly encourage you to do so. But just make sure you have an idea of how you want to message that in your interviews itself.

I'd also avoid revealing the fact that you're interviewing because you're desperate. This may be because you got laid off or fired or whatever the reason might be, but you have a sense of urgency to get back into the workplace as quickly as you can to start collecting a paycheck. Because inevitably what an employer is going to hear is that you're desperate.

It's kind of like the dating world, where if somebody has a high sense of urgency for a particular outcome, they usually end up pushing that outcome further away from them because nobody wants to be somebody's desperate play or something like that. And I can understand it can be difficult if you're somebody that's in a situation like that where you're gonna lose your house, your lights are being shut off, and you need to get a paycheck somehow.

You need to reach down deep and convey that you're calm and collected and that you're a cool customer because you don't want to be put into the "not bucket" cause you're overly eager and sharing that you're desperate for work.

The next thing we don't want to share, and this could be inadvertent through a resume that's not carefully written as well, is your age. And this could be both sides if you're too young, too old. Both of those have been subject to age discrimination. And unfortunately, it does happen.

And be careful with certain technologies. Or even your email address could indicate how old you are. Actually, I had a resume once, this is a few years ago now, but even at the time it was still pretty shocking that they actually put a fax number on their resume and it was like, "Who even has that?" So that clearly indicated to me that the person was a little out of place in the job market and it was a little bit more difficult for them.

So my recommendation would be to mind your email addresses, mind the dates that are on your resume, and certainly don't offer how old you are when you sit down for the interview. Taking that one a step further, we also don't want to indicate how many years we have left in the workforce.

And this one is really common, especially with folks who are in the last five to seven years of their career. They'll tell me things like, "I just want to land this last job, the last stop on my career, put in 10 good years, and ride off into the sunset."

And then what that becomes to me is, okay, now you're 55, and I don't even want to think of that stuff when I'm interviewing somebody because now if I think about it, it becomes a liability. And I shouldn't know any of that stuff about you as a recruiter. And as you get into the hiring manager phase, you certainly don't want to talk about that.

Because if the hiring manager has a plan for this role to grow, and I have my own opinion on this whole thing of hiring people for growth opportunities, considering the average tenure of a worker in today's job market is like three years or something, so they shouldn't be making decisions based on somebody's long-term plans, but nonetheless they do.

You don't want to clue into the hiring manager that you only have plans to work for three to five years when in the hiring manager's mind they want to find somebody that's going to have 10 plus because inevitably it's going to create a bias against you and it's not going to be easy to prove it. But one day you're going to get a rejection letter and you're going to wonder what happened.

The next major thing that I would avoid revealing in an interview is that you have major medical issues. Of course, if you have major medical issues that would prohibit you from meeting the basic requirements at the position, the employer is going to have the right to know that you won't be able to do the job.

But they should be asking you in the application process, are you able to meet the requirements of this position as set forth in the job description? And you should be answering truthfully. And at the recruiter stage, they may ask you that question as well.

And at that point you should be truthful if you're asked. And the question came up that there was somebody who was pregnant and was interviewing for the position. And the employer, the hiring manager said, "I don't want to hire this person because they're pregnant and they're gonna be taking all this time off." And there's actually laws against that. You can't not hire a person because they're pregnant, and they don't even have to disclose it.

The same thing goes for disabilities. If you're somebody that has a disability that wouldn't interfere with your ability to perform the job, I would certainly not recommend that you even bring it up as an issue because again, if we require a reasonable accommodation, we should be indicating that in the application and if we're asked by the recruiter.

But say, for example, if you're somebody that's high-functioning autistic and you want the employer or the hiring manager to know that dynamic because it might impact your ability to do the job or you want a reasonable accommodation at the time of offers when you would bring that up, I would not bring it up during the actual interview because you don't want them to have a bias that they form against you inadvertently.

Because after a while we want to hire for our ability to perform the job based on the requirements of the position, based on the job description, and that's why job descriptions are written so carefully, is because they try to check all those boxes because that's the litmus test: does the person match up to the job description close enough to be able to perform the job with or without reasonable accommodation? So just keep that in mind.

The next major faux pas and one I definitely wouldn't reveal is your political belief system. As much as it may be tempting and is aligned as you think you are to a company's mission or potentially a hiring manager's viewpoints, be very careful what you share here because obviously the political spectrum is very wide.

It's very heated, very opinionated, and it's better just to stay completely out of it because you never know what the belief system is of the hiring manager you're interviewing with, even if they work for a company that might align with your core values.

And the final thing that I'm going to cover in today's video, and this is one that happens very commonly, and I certainly would not recommend that you do it, is to reveal your previous salary. Because when the salary question does come up, and it'll usually come up during the recruiter phone screen, if you disclose what your previous salary is, then you're locking yourself into that.

It's a high salary and you've properly valued yourself in your career. It might be advantageous for you, but in most cases, you're probably gonna lock yourself into a lower salary than you probably should, especially if you're somebody that was way underpaid based on the rest of the market.

And it's really annoying to even have to say this, but it happens enough that I do have to say it. You don't want an employer to determine your value. You, as the employee, need to be determining your worth based on what you know the open market suggests for your particular set of skills, experiences, and knowledge. If you need more guidance on how to answer the salary question, check out my video on salary expectations. It'll give you a lot more information about how you should approach that question.

So this list came from a lot of years of interviewing. Hopefully you find some value in it. Hopefully if there's a few in there that you were questioning. I know I've gotten a lot of questions about disabilities in particular in my comments, but I wanted to clarify some of those for you and give you a little bit more insight on how to approach some of these more delicate situations.

But hopefully this was helpful for you. And if you're somebody that needs a little bit more help with your job search, that is actually something that I specialize in. I have a website called lifeafterlayoff.com. It's loaded with tips and tricks, all from an insider's perspective.

And I do share my deepest and most intimate knowledge in the form of some training courses. I've talked about resume rockt I field before, I've talked about the Ultimate Job Seeker Boot Camp before, and I've talked about the unlocking LinkedIn courses which are all really great and they will help supercharge your career.

And I'm thrilled to announce that I just launched a new course as I create this video called the 48 Hour Interview Crash Course and it's designed as a perfect companion for the Ultimate Job Seeker Boot Camp. It's designed for the person who has an interview coming up and you just want really targeted information on how to navigate through a major corporation's interview processes, how to prepare for and how to make sure that you're delivering the right answers that are going to give you the best chance of moving to the next round of the interview.

So I'll leave a link for it in my bio, you can check it out; it's on my website as well. Really excited about the course. I think you'll find a lot of value if you're somebody that gets nervous and wants to just have your best foot forward for that big interview that's coming up. So check that one out.

If you're somebody that needs a little bit more personalized help, I do offer some limited private one-on-one coaching sessions. You can reach me through my website to schedule those as well. There's all the information that you'll need.

Hey, happy job hunting! Hopefully, this list is a little bit helpful for you as you navigate through these uncertain waters of major corporations hiring processes. Like always, I'm here to help. See you on the next one.