39 Ways Companies Stack the Deck Against You in Job Interviews

Updated September 2020.

Originally written in mid-2017 in collaboration with Zvi Epner.

Illustrations by Kath Loose.

Even if you get the job, the interview process is set up for you to lose.

Companies want you to think an interview is a series of hurdles you need to jump over. The conventional applicant thinking goes: “If I can show I’m able to meet the company’s standards, they’ll be impressed enough to offer me the job along with a fair salary.”

Many people blindly accept this way of thinking, but the truth is it’s extremely toxic to their happiness and financial well-being.

Companies rely on the interview process to make you feel weak and malleable. They take advantage of it to keep your salary low. It could result in consistently worse opportunities over your entire career, costing you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.

I’d like to propose an alternative. What if you thought about the interview process as a two-way search for alignment?

It could go something like this: You and some companies are going to interview each other to see if you have business goals that line up. If that happens, and you can agree on a price that works, you can make a fair deal.

The key is this: You’re not being given a job. This isn’t a tryout. It’s an equal exchange. Your employer gets a valuable addition to their team, and you get a salary (plus the fulfillment of putting your talents to good, productive use).

So instead of buying into the recycled conventional wisdom of job interviews, let’s reconstruct the process and focus on the fact that almost every job boils down to a simple business formula:

It’s you getting tasks or projects done for money.

You might be thinking “But what about fulfillment? Or the company’s mission?”

If you feel good about what you’re doing for work, or you believe in your company’s mission, that’s great. It’s a nice feature, and we should all be so lucky. 

But here’s a list of things you can’t do with job satisfaction:

• Pay your rent or mortgage
• Feed yourself or your family
• Pay down your student loans
• Make your car payment
• Save for retirement

So regardless of the legitimate value you may place on your job’s social impact, from the company’s perspective it really is the simple financial arrangement described before. 

You do the work. For money. The company then takes your work and sells it to their customers in some form at a 2-5x markup.

Now consider this: The company wants to make money, but it can’t raise prices too much or it’ll lose customers. So most companies focus on reducing expenses too.

The biggest expense for most organizations is payroll. Which means if the company wants to be as profitable possible (hint: they do), it has to try and pay you as little as possible.

It cannot be stressed how important money is to a company. Companies have an entirely different attitude about money compared to most people.

If you spent all the cash in your bank accounts and maxed out your credit cards, you’d have a pretty bad time. Maybe you’d even go bankrupt. But you wouldn’t die. 

If a company runs out of money, it’s usually toast. Without cash flow, it can’t pay its employees, buy materials or supplies, or provide services for its clients. Money is like oxygen to a company. If it doesn’t get enough, the lights go out and it’s dead forever.

This simple fact means companies have learned to be ruthless about cost reduction. Even at the rare companies that pay their people well, the goal is almost always to pay their workers as little as possible.

This doesn’t just apply to people who pick fruit for a living – the company you work for operates the same way. And the main way they do it is…

They break you down during the hiring process so they can lock you in for the lowest possible price.

They set you up to go through all kinds of mental trips and traps so by the end – when they put that offer in front of you – you feel relieved, happy, and grateful. In this state, most people readily accept an offer that’s lower than what they’re truly worth.

Most people have an inkling that trying to negotiate during the offer stage is a good idea. Perhaps they give a half-assed attempt at another couple thousand dollars, but they’ll capitulate if the company pushes back because they feel like they better not press their luck. Who wants to lose out on this opportunity to pay their bills? And they can’t bear the thought of going through that exhausting, degrading interview process again.

It’s in the company’s best interest for you to feel this way, and the entire interview process is structured to create that outcome.

The company wants to keep you on the hook, while doing its best to make you forget that you’re a unique, specialized, and valuable person.

As many people as possible should internalize this concept so they can avoid falling victim to it. It starts with recognizing it when it comes up. Here are some examples of the ways companies set you up to fail as a job seeker:

1. They call you a “job seeker” (even though they’re the ones seeking help.)
   • Companies don’t arbitrarily hand out jobs for your benefit. They hire because they need someone to help them. They’re the ones who have a need, but by classifying you as a job seeker, applicant, or candidate, they start to subtly shift the balance of power back in their favor.
2. They present a pie-in-the-sky written job description.
   • Even if you’re the perfect candidate for the job, the written job description is meant to make you doubt yourself. But here’s the thing most people don’t realize: Most times the job description is a hurried copy-paste of whatever they used last time for a similar position. It was probably requested at the last minute by a busy hiring manager – and it was most likely written and posted by an intern or administrative person with very little knowledge of the actual business need. The truth is most companies are in a constant mild state of chaos and it’s entirely possible that no one can clearly articulate what they need for any single position. It should be up to you to tell them. After all, you’re the professional and they’re the ones who need someone like you.
3. They encourage you to research them before the interview (but not the other way around).
   • This would be like going on a first date with someone who expected you to tell you what you about them online. Doing this puts you in a subservient position at best, and at worst it makes you seem creepy and weird.
4. They require you to write a cover letter to no one.
   • They ask for a cover letter or give you one of those generic text boxes to fill out. But they don’t tell you who to address it to. Forcing a cover letter means you’ll have to begin with the weakest of all opens: “Dear Hiring Manager.” You might as well address it “Dear Anyone Who Will Listen.” Another way to make you feel subservient.
5. They offer you things instead of money.
   • They tell you how they have this great summer Friday policy. Or they show off the coffee machine. Or say you can bring your dog to work. Or they’ll have someone come and pick up your dry cleaning, like a king! These things are nice, but given the choice, most people would rather have the money.

6. They make you talk salary with an HR stooge.
   • When it comes time to negotiate the price, they make you speak with someone new. Just like when the car dealership has you talk to the “finance manager.” This person doesn’t understand your value and you haven’t had the chance to build any rapport with them. Typically all they’re allowed to do is quote company policy.
7. They dazzle you with pseudo-professional language.
   • By taking the humanity out of the conversation and jamming a bunch of corporate-speak, acronyms, and industry terminology down your throat, companies can put you on your back foot right out of the gate. This serves them because it can get you thinking “maybe I don’t know enough to do this job.”
8. They use corporate lackeys to pitch you.
   • They’ll bring in other team members during the interview process to give you a heavily biased and often blatantly false idea of what it’s like to work there. These people are effectively paid actors who oversell the benefits of working for the company.
9. They make you go through an outside recruiter.
   • Although many will tell you they love their work, recruiters serve themselves – just like everybody else. They’ll gladly place you anywhere they can, and you are ultimately just one more dry-erase tally mark on the whiteboard in their office.
10. They load up Glassdoor with fake reviews.
    • Like most online reviews, these are usually fake. The positive reviews have either been written by management themselves, or by employees who have been compelled by management. Deep down you already know this. The negative reviews are genuine but they’ve all been written by people who are sore about being fired or snubbed.
11. They ask you to tell them your previous or required salary.
    • Under no circumstance should you ever disclose this to an employer. But they’ll ask you in a way that makes you feel bad for not answering their question. It’s better for you to let them know you’d rather discuss that after you’ve determined how much value you’re going to add to their bottom line.
12. They try and get you thinking about a promotion before you’ve even got the job.
    • Companies love to talk about future “opportunities” as if they’re the ones who call all the shots. They do it so you take the current job for less money. They set up ladders for you to climb, but never fully commit to their end of the bargain. Notice how most employee growth plans contain language that ultimately leaves it at the company’s discretion. As if depending on someone else to say when you’re good enough is a sensible way to live a life you’re proud of.
13. They use misleading double-speak to encourage obedience.
    • “This isn’t the kind of place where anyone is forced to work on weekends” is double-speak for “we often work on weekends and you will feel immense social pressure to do so.” Or they say they’re a “work hard, play hard” type of place, which means they work very long hours and drink a lot. There are probably hundreds of these euphemisms and they all mean the same thing: the company’s needs come before your own.
14. They ask you if you have any other positions you’re interviewing for.
    • All they want to know is how easy it will be to control you during the process.
15. They pretend they have a formal interview process to begin with.
    • For most companies, hiring is a completely reactive practice. Something changed about their business and they probably tried for a while to fill in the gaps without spending money. But now the team is overworked and they need help. It’s quite disorganized, yet they pretend they have an official recruiting process to make you feel like they’re in control. They put up a professional facade, but if you could see behind the scenes, you’d realize it’s just as chaotic as everything else in life.
16. They take up your most precious resource: time.
    • Even though they’re usually just hiring a single person, companies have no problem bringing in multiple candidates for grueling, all-day interviews. When an interview is so long it takes up your whole day, it’s risky or expensive to have to keep taking days off at your current job. And when you feel like you’ve already invested so much time in the company, you’re more likely to accept their lowball offer at the end.
17. They make you complete a background or credit check.
    • Most background and credit checks have no business purpose whatsoever. I know great accountants with terrible personal credit. And I’ve seen firsthand that rehabilitated people with criminal records work harder to prove themselves. But even if you have a perfect background, companies use screenings to make you feel scrutinized and self-conscious. They want you to feel relieved to “pass” their process.
18. They give you loaded “what-if” scenarios.
    • They’ll ask questions like “If we extended you an offer, would you accept it today?” This is a trap. If you say yes, they’ll know you’re desperate and that they’ll be able to get away with offering you a low salary. If you say no, they can introduce doubt about whether you’re right for the job. It’s best to say you don’t typically speculate when it comes to your career, and that you’d rather make a decision when you have all the information you need.
19. They make you feel like you need to be a good “cultural fit”.
    • When companies say they have “great culture,” it usually just means they have a casual office environment. There’s probably a kitchen with snacks, the occasional happy hour, and a bean bag chair (fun!). But culture is more than free coffee. In reality, culture fluctuates organically as employees come and go, and all organizations have a similar mix of office politics, gossip, and drama. More importantly, companies rely on diverse workers to solve problems so it’s ridiculous for them to pretend all their employees are on the same page. If a company mentions their “great culture” to you, they’re trying to make themselves sound cool so you feel lucky if they accept you into their special club.
20. They try to sell you on an inflated or blatantly false earning potential.
    • This usually happens with sales jobs. They’ll leave out key details or cherry-pick data to make it seem like you’ll be earning a lot more than you actually will.
21. They ask you for character or professional references.
    • AKA “biased reviews from your friends.” This absurd practice also gives you the unsettling knowledge that people are talking about you behind your back, so you’ll feel relieved when your references come back positive. Companies gain position over you by making it feel like you need other people to vouch for you. In reality, you are the best person to speak about your strengths.
22. They ask you if you have any questions at the end of the interview.
    • “Any questions?” is something people in charge say after giving orders. And giving you a token 5 minutes at the end of the interview makes you feel like you’re the one holding things up. In a fair interview, you and the interviewer should be sharing responsibility for the push-pull conversation over the course of the entire interview.
23. They make you take a pre-employment drug screening.
    • Nothing says “I own you” more than forcing you to piss in a plastic cup then put it on a little tray. Then they ship your urine off to analyze it and see what you’ve been doing in your off time. As if it’s any of their business. Offensive and dehumanizing.

24. They make you sign an NDA.
    • They prop up their own authority by treating their completely normal and obvious business operations like they are on some kind of top-secret government mission. Just another way they try to make you feel lucky to get to be there.
25. They make you show ID to get into the building.
    • Imagine asking the hiring manager for ID? Bet they’d act offended, yet the company just did the same thing to you.
26. They fact-check your resume.
    • Notice how they make you prove the most basic facts about yourself, but never offer any concrete proof of their own claims about how great they are? If you fact-checked any of their marketing material, I bet you’d find more than a few inconsistencies.
27. They imply you shouldn’t talk about your salary.
    • They almost always position this like “we don’t want the others to know how much you make.” This is a ploy to make you feel like you’re sharing a secret. Just another way to control you, and it puts limits on your ability to make an informed decision by discussing what you’re worth.
28. They try to make you feel bad for asking for more.
    • They act like they had to work really hard to get you the salary they offered you, and act doubtful that any attempt to negotiate would go over well. Another car sales trick.
29. They don’t tell you the pay scale that’s in place.
    • Most medium to large companies will have a predetermined pay scale in place to avoid problems with existing employees. They won’t volunteer this information, but it’s crucial to find out. Your main goal is to get on the scale as high as possible. Our suggestion? Just ask. An employer can’t easily hide this info from a prospective employee when directly asked for it. And many organizations (like school districts) are required to publish salary scales publicly.
30. They make you an exploding offer.
    • They tell you that the job offer expires within a certain amount of time. They might say the offer is good until next week, or that they need to hear back by tomorrow, or some other made up deadline. Even though you both want to waste as little time as possible, notice how the deadlines always seem to come from them.
31. They make you do free or cheap work to prove yourself.
    • This is where they give you a homework assignment to complete before you get the job. Unless they’re paying you your full freelance rate (hint: they aren’t), this practice immediately devalues your work. After all, they just got you to do it for free. There is nothing more professionally insulting than this.
32. They make you take a test to prove what you know.
    • You know you’re qualified. Yet they sit you down like a kid in school and quiz you. As if the ability to do well on a test means anything when it comes to getting actual work done.  
33. They make you apply through an Applicant Tracking System.
    • You know those terrible application websites where you upload your resume and it tries to fill in the application for you, then you have to go back and fix everything it screwed up? No one has a good experience with these things. HR departments say these systems are needed because it makes it easier to parse data from randomly formatted sources (i.e. resumes). So they make you submit redundant information through a frustrating process instead. These systems exist to reduce your valuable experience and winning personality to a data point. They want to test your patience for bureaucracy and ability to follow directions. It’s just another way to standardize you and make you feel small. Any sensible person should be able to get everything they need from your LinkedIn profile.
34. They expect you to dress up.
    • Like a child dressing up for church. Unless you’re a banker or high-level executive, the expectation that you wear formal clothes to an interview is ridiculous. Notice how they’ve branded the uniform as “business casual” even though no one in their right mind would casually wear those shoes. By forcing you out of your comfort zone and into uncomfortable clothes (which you have to pay to clean), companies exert control over your wallet and your basic appearance before you even start working for them.
35. They have you sit in a silly chair in the lobby.
    • They have you sit there and act polite while the entry-level person at the front desk ignores you.
36. They call the type of degree you have into question.
    • They’ll say or imply something like “we typically don’t interview candidates with this kind of degree.” Sorry, when was the last time you used something you learned in school at work? Typically used to try and get a discount on people who are obviously smart and will bring a much needed different point of view to the organization.
37. They highlight where your skills don’t match up.
    • Simple negging. Even though the job description they wrote was a fantasy, they can always find a few areas where you’re not perfectly aligned. As if anyone is the perfect candidate. Sometimes done under the guise of “constructive feedback” this tactic is usually the precursor to a low salary offer.
38. They make up reasons why this job is different or special.
    • They’ll call it a “hybrid” role, or invent a new title for you. This prevents you from comparing salary with other similar jobs in your industry. In the extremely rare case it actually is a hybrid role, they’ll want to pay you the salary of the cheaper position, instead of properly compensating you for having to switch back and forth to fulfill a specialized need.
39. Throughout all this, they maintain a highly positive and enthusiastic tone.
    • No one wants to feel like a party pooper. So they rely on social pressure to make you feel like you shouldn’t interfere with the positive momentum. If they can get you feeling like this, you’ll be much less likely to ask the hard questions you need to ask to ensure the job is actually a good fit for you.  And you’ll be less likely to negotiate hard on salary.

There are probably dozens more of these.

In my experience, companies really don’t like it when you call them out for this stuff. It’s not personal, it just interferes with their bottom line. 

Remember, companies need money to live. Giving you the upper hand by exposing their tactics is like squeezing off a dying man’s oxygen; he’s going to fight for it.

I should also note that this behavior is not usually directly intentional on the part of the people who are carrying it out. Most managers of the hiring process and their staff are just doing what they assume is the right way to hire, without thinking too hard about the experience they’re creating.

Nonetheless, many people (especially those closest to the hiring process) will be unwilling to confront the truth about it.

Here’s what I think these people will say in response:

Managers who use these tactics and the employees who fall for them will call me cynical. I recognize this can come across as cynical and distrusting. But I’m basing it on 15 years of actual work experience. Don’t forget, if you died tomorrow, your company would probably replace you within a week or so.

I think it’s also important to separate the corporation from the people who work for it. I believe most people are inherently good. They’re also inherently afraid to bite the hand that feeds them. To cope with that fear, they’ll dress it up as positivity and “being a team player.” Human beings are also tribal in nature and people will always take on some of the characteristics of the organization they represent. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see how management at your company uses these tactics to the company’s advantage.

Armchair lawyer types will chime in to say how these tactics exist to reduce company liability. These people will quote a made-up or irrelevant hypothetical situation to scare you into thinking they know what they’re talking about. Make no mistake, these tactics are not about preventing some one-in-a-million edge case, they exist to control you.

Corporate apologists will say companies do these things to ensure the safety of their employees. Excuse me? Take a second to think about your boss, or the HR person at your last job. Now imagine them as a member of your personal security team. Who do they think they are? Liam Neeson?

They’ll tell you all kinds of reasons why it’s for your own good. It’s to improve your happiness, job satisfaction, or career development. As if you, a grown adult, needs someone to tell you what satisfies you. They’ll say they do it to create a better work environment, or any other nice-sounding reason except for the real one, which is to gain power over you and save them money.

From the perspective of the business, I should be clear that I find nothing wrong with companies trying these tactics from a business ethics perspective. They’re great negotiating tactics for keeping payroll costs down and keeping employees in line. And if you’re trying to run a business, more power to you.

But as an employee, think of it like this: You wouldn’t marry a person who made you go through a bunch of tests to prove your worth because it would make you feel desperate. It would poison the relationship from the start, and you’d be setting yourself up to be taken advantage of constantly.

Most sensible people would resist if someone tried these kinds of manipulative tactics on them in a personal relationship, because it’s wrong to let someone control us in that way.

So unless you want to be constantly taken advantage of at work, why would you allow yourself to be treated this way for a simple paycheck?

If you’re an employee, you should be aware that your employer is going to try and use these tactics to gain position and power over you, starting well before your first day on the job and continuing through your entire tenure.

Remember: They want to offer you as little money as possible for your time and effort.

But if you can be aware they’re going to try these tactics on you, you’ll be able to navigate the hiring process with more ease and comfort. You’ll be more poised and confident, and you’ll be able to negotiate for more autonomy, and more money, in your next position.

Good luck out there.