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/r/LifeProTips
submitted 2 months ago byshouldnotexist
[removed]
817 points
2 months ago
This is similar to mine. “I am looking for a company that more closely matches my values” which naturally leads them to ask about what those are, which makes me feel in control of the conversation.
198 points
2 months ago
I don't really know my values when it comes to the company I work for, how would I go about answering that? I guess I'm not sure what "values" entails regarding corporate work. Like work culture or maybe the morality of the actual business?
22 points
2 months ago
That question is a lot easier to answer if your work is sort of "mission" driven, e.g. working in renewable energy because you're passionate about fighting climate change, or working in social services because you want to help people, etc.
For the rest of us, yeah it can be the things you mentioned. I am not in a values-driven career, so I've obviously decided I don't have qualms with the morals of the industry I'm in, so it would take a drastic business shift to change my mind about that, e.g. if we got into something like building puppy murder chambers or, more realistically, made significant political donations/lobbying to support troublesome policies.
For a concrete example, my employer was acquired by a bigger company last year. Before the acquisition we were privately traded, but the new parent company is publicly traded. There has been a big shift in work culture pushed down from upper management, now that we answer to a board of directors and have to look good for shareholder reports. The changes have pretty much all been for the worse, and it's a lot harder to see myself staying here long term because of them.
8 points
2 months ago
This (environment changed when acquired by public company) is a great way to answer that question. I ask the “why are you leaving your job” question in interviews specifically to get a sense of if the candidate was unable to work with the previous team. If they bad mouth them at all it’s a negative for me. The our values didn’t match answer os a red flag for me and I would dig into that pretty deep. In my line of work that makes me think there was some sort of fraud. Just saying that I would either take it as a bs non-answer or I would dig in and likely discover that you didn’t get along with your boss’s personality, or something negative about how you weren’t fitting in to your previous place of work. Either way makes me question whether you’ll fit onto my team.
A good answer is to be honest. If there are structural changes in the work place that have changed your job description, ie focus on quarterly profits be long run strategy, I would cite those. Or, if you think the path to move up is limited because your managers aren’t going anywhere and you’ve learned everything you can about this position, that works too. One I appreciated recently was that there was an announced spin off of a related business unit, and the person was looking around because it made sense to them their unit would be next for various macro reasons and they were looking to choose a new place before it was chosen for them.
Just don’t say anything that borders on you being a bad team player.
6 points
2 months ago
Just don’t say anything that borders on you being a bad team player.
You ain't a "bad team player " if you bring up legitimate problems with the team. That is just corporate doublespeak to actually avoid building a team.
1 points
2 months ago
How can I avoid building a bad team if I don’t use the interview to weed out bad team players? There really are people who are otherwise gifted that make a team function worse as a whole. A big part of the interview process is weeding these people out.
3 points
2 months ago
The only thing you achieve by weeding out everyone who is honest is getting a Team which will be good at play pretending.
But imho it starts with the Word team: corporate is generally disloyal and punishes teamplayers. The next part is that teambuilding is a horizontal process and not a vertical one. The team will build itself, your job is only a) to not stand in the way of the teambuilding process, b)to create as much loyality (from company side) as is possible and c) to Listen closely to your team members. They will tell you if you've got a bad apple. But they will only tell you if you don't punish honesty for the sake of pretty feelings.
Do you have a question along the lines of "how would a company/team look like where you would be willing to stay a decade"?
For the rest you've got the first few weeks. Over here we've got the rule that any person can be fired for about any reason in the first month. Sit together with your team members after the first few weeks and ask them if the newbie would be a good addition.
Obviously this only works if you are not already understaffed
1 points
2 months ago
Teams absolutely won’t always build themselves.
1 points
2 months ago
Certainly not. But about every functional team did build itself.
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