- Sam Manna
If you’ve been in the workforce long enough, you know the
feeling of having a bad boss. You stay up late, refusing to surrender to sleep
because it means going to work the next day. You wake up dreading going to
work, hitting the snooze button multiple times before dragging yourself out of
bed. You feel an uncomfortable sense of almost magnetic repulsion as you
approach your office door. At work, you’re on edge, and can’t shake the sense
of imminent catastrophe. Everyone is walking around on eggshells. Weekends
become a refuge where put your mind as far away from work as possible and you
shudder at the thought of Monday.
Bad bosses are terrible for your career. They’re terrible
for companies. They’re terrible for the economy and, in a wider sense, they’re
terrible for society. We’ve all encountered bosses who project their own
insecurities onto other people by carving out small fiefdoms and ruling them
with an iron fist. These bosses are hypocritical in what they demand of their
employees versus what they themselves accomplish. They issue orders instead of
leading. They micromanage. And they refuse to take accountability.
When you start a new role, it sometimes takes weeks or more
before realizing you’re stuck with a bad boss. But is it possible to spot a bad
boss before you start a new job? Are there any signs in an interview
that can tip you off that you should run in the other direction?
Here are 5 questions you should ask yourself during an
interview to help determine whether you’ve got a good or bad boss on your
hands:
1. How do the other
employees seem when you come in for the interview?
When you go into a new office, observe the body language of
other employees in the workspace. If they avoid eye contact, or seem sullen or
disengaged, dissatisfaction with the supervisor might be the culprit. If it’s
for a more senior-level role, does the hiring manager let you interview with
peers? A good boss will be conscientious of building a thriving ecosystem, and
he or she will want buy-in from other members of the team before adding to it.
A boss who’s overly controlling will isolate the members of the team they
supervise. So pay attention to interactions with current employees, or lack
thereof.
2. Does the
supervisor speak overly negatively of previous employees?
Recruiters and career experts often give candidates the
piece of advice that you should never speak negatively about a previous role in
an interview. It makes sense. You don’t want the employer to think that you’re
going to badmouth this job if and/or when you move on. But hiring is
a two-way street, and candidates need to be just as mindful of similar
behaviour in hiring managers. A boss who speaks overly negatively about
previous employees might have unrealistic standards of behaviour, or they might
be overly willing to throw their team under the bus for their own failings.
3. Are they
distracted in the interview or overly pushy?
You should have a certain tolerance for outside
interruptions during an interview, especially if it’s a fast-paced workplace.
But an effective leader will be fully engaged during an interview and won’t be
consistently taking calls, answering emails, checking their phone or (we’ve
heard this one surprisingly often) leaving the room. This type of behaviour
shows a lack of focus at best, and a tactic to seem important at worst.
Likewise, does the interviewer let you speak without interruption, and do you
feel like you’re being heard? These are questions you should ask yourself as
the interview progresses.
4. Have you looked up
the company culture online?
When you’re interviewing, it’s important to look at a new
opportunity the same way you would look at a major purchase. There’s a huge
wealth of information online. So you want to do your homework. Not just in
terms of understanding a company and its culture so that you can nail the
interview, but also so that you can determine whether it’s going to be a rewarding
place to work. You can use sites like glassdoor.com which provide employee
feedback about various companies. You can also check out the role on LinkedIn.
Run a search for the job and evaluate whether there’s been lots of turnover.
Are there tons of people with the same role who were there only for a short
while? That could be an indicator of a bad boss.
5. Have you asked
them what kind of boss they are?
Sometimes, instead of trying to ascertain a boss’s method of
leadership indirectly, it’s helpful to just come out and ask a prospective
supervisor about their leadership style to see if it jives with the way you
like to work.
It’s certainly the case that not everyone is in a position
to pick and choose who they want to work for. But a bad boss can be such a drag
on your career that it’s worth considering these questions before you go in for
a role.
We love all the discussion this post has generated. Tell us
your stories of bad bosses on Twitter using the hashtag #BadBoss!
*** Sam Manna is Director of Client Development and Talent Acquisition
at Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm that
specializes in Supply Chain Management, Procurement, Logistics, Operations and
Planning. He has more than a decade of recruitment industry experience and has
recruited for some of Canada’s top companies
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