Is this out of bounds?
When I apply to my next job some day, I’d like to know before I signed the dotted the line that everyone else voted negatively with their feet.
I always ask about it, but indirectly. I usually ask why the position I’m applying for is open. If they are adding to the team, that is great, if an employee moved on to another company, that is generally bad, and if they moved up within the company, that’s good info to have. I also like to ask about the tenure/experience of the team I’ll be working with. You can’t draw straight lines between this info and employee turnover, but it allows you to make some educated guesses about advancement/exit opportunities as well as some inferences about turnover.
I generally don’t ask directly. if it was some terrible reason like the culture sucks, the boss is a huge ahole dbag, or people keep getting shafted at bonus time, they will likely lie to you . so bec you will likely be lied to anyway + you could have made them uncomfortable (neutal to negative) there’s more downside here. The goal is to ALWYAS land the offer in writing first.
presumably, you already did some homework potentially to get an idea of the firm, and maybe even better. the open spot. if you knew the culture sucked and went to interview anyway, well then, that’s your choice.
If the team is humble enough, they tend to tell you honestly what they’re looking for and why it’s open
I ask directly.
Also, it can be that nobody departs (great right?)…because it is where people go to die!!!
I too always ask this question. It’s funny though, when I was interviewing for my current role, I asked about turnover in the lunch with current non-management employees and they said it’s low. Fast forward 2 years and nearly the entire non-management part of my group has turned over. You never know how things will work out…
Glassdoor normally tells me all I need to know. Even on smallish firms (1k employees), it seems to always give me accurate insight. Just look for common themes among the negative reviews and positive reviews (seperately)
Just what I needed to hear. Thanks, Itera - you’ve helped me out in a lot of responses over the last year. It’s like you said, nobody ever thinks “my team left me because I’m an asshole”. Well it’s possible that someone is brave enough to think that, but it’s rare
The more likely scenario (in my mind’s eye) is they’ll give some BS about how other employees just weren’t tough enough or didn’t have the chops, or some other pretentious shit.
The reason why I put it to them straight is to watch body language in that moment of shock when they are trying to think up the lie. You can usually sense if there is something wrong, in what they don’t say, or subconscious body movements. So you get an honest answer either way.