Another addition to the killer interview questions collection: Does your current employer know you’re looking for work?.
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This question is apparently asked by Citrix at interviews, according to a roundup of questions from Business Insider. As a possible answer, it suggests “My current employer knows that I work hard, that I’m ambitious, and am looking to advance my career.”
While this is a decent response, it invites a further and potentially trickier question: “Why can’t you advance with your current employer?” You need to balance this one carefully: you don’t want to appear disloyal, but nor do you want to appear unwilling to advance.
How would you answer the question?
15 Real Tech Company Interview Questions You Will Probably Be Asked (And How To Answer Them) [Business Insider]
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5 responses to “Killer Interview Question: Does Your Current Employer Know You’re Looking For Work?”
Correct answer: I’ve discussed this with my manager and he/she is supportive of my ambition to develop my capability across different employers and with different product offerings.
Real answer: No, the company is vindictive and has sidelined people that it can hang onto who have shown signs of wanting to move.
And usually it is the good people that go, the ones who get things done and not play the political game, yet get overlooked by management because they were not talking themselves up.
Too many times I have seen people promoted and taking credit or partial credit for other peoples work.
I got sidelined once for showing more ambition than my manager, eventually I found another manager that recognised my efforts and he took me into his team and from their I got the training and responsibility I was after, then cam the promotion, but it did burn a bridge. It was not a career long impact so far nearly 8 years on.
– They don’t offer training or the corporate structure does not provide much room for advancement.
– There isn’t always advancement opportunities in small companies / You may have been working somewhere for a long time already and no opportunities have shown up / Maybe you’ve happily taken on additional responsibilities already but they haven’t created a new position or rewarded you for it.
People don’t always shuffle around that much. I’ve been in my current job for three years and was promised advancement opportunities, but the small company just hasn’t grown enough to allow that. I’ve taken on many more responsibilities that should really necessitate other staff memebers and received no financial compensation. Previously I’ve worked for government and it has been much easier to move up the ladder.
In this day and age:
“Yes they do know, and in fact expected. because they are just about to make me redundant”
That’s a rubbish response, and the clumsy reframing is far more obvious and less impressive than the person spewing it out thinks. The only thing it achieves is that you can’t answer a simple question.