5 Interview Behaviours That Quietly Scream ‘Toxic Culture’

Have you ever sat in a job interview that felt more like an interrogation? Well, congratulations. You just spotted your first red flag.

I’ve sat on both sides of that table for more than twenty years across the GCC, and I’ve watched a lot of interview processes that were never built to work in the first place. Most are outdated, ego-driven, or simply not designed for the multi-generational, multi-market workforce we have across this region today.

Here’s what I believe. Preparing for an interview is a shared job, not just something the candidate carries. The interviewer holds just as much responsibility for getting it right, because the interview is the first real preview of the culture you’re about to join.

So regardless of which side of the table you’re sitting on, here are the five behaviours I watch out for.

1. It feels like an interrogation, not a conversation

A good interview should challenge you. It shouldn’t make you feel like you’re on trial.

If an interviewer spends the whole meeting trying to catch you out, interrupts your answers, or seems more focused on proving they’re the smartest person in the room than understanding who you are, ask yourself why.

The same goes in reverse. Candidates who show up to fire off rehearsed answers without taking the time to understand the business aren’t building a conversation either.

The best interviews feel like exactly that: two people working out whether they can be successful together.

2. Nobody can explain why the role exists

One of the biggest red flags I see is when different interviewers give different reasons for the hire. Usually, it’s HR telling one story and the hiring manager telling another.

Is it growth? A replacement? A restructure? A new strategy? It doesn’t take much for a hiring team to get their story straight, and if they can’t, there’s a good chance the business itself isn’t as aligned as it looks from the outside.

Interviewers should be able to explain the purpose of the role clearly. Candidates should feel confident enough to ask. Clarity builds confidence on both sides of the table.

3. They sell the dream and skip the reality

Every company has its challenges. Every role has its frustrations. So if everything sounds perfect, you’re probably not getting the full picture.

The strongest hiring managers talk openly about what’s hard, because they know honesty is what builds trust before day one even starts. This matters more than most companies realise. MIT Sloan Management Review’s research on toxic workplace culture found that roughly one in five employees have left a job at some point specifically because of its culture, and that a toxic culture was one of the single strongest predictors of attrition researchers tested, well ahead of pay. That’s not a small number, and it usually starts with a hiring process that oversold a role.

Likewise, candidates carry the same responsibility. Be honest about what genuinely motivates you and what doesn’t. Overselling yourself today just creates disappointment for all six months later.

A good hire starts with realistic expectations from everyone.

4. Respect disappears the moment the interview ends

Culture isn’t shown in what gets said during the interview. It’s shown in everything around it.

Late arrivals with no apology. No feedback. Poor communication. Constant rescheduling.

These aren’t administrative slip-ups, they’re behavioural ones, and are way too common across the GCC. It’s because of this that I’ve even turned down working with organisations. It’s simply rude.

But candidates aren’t exempt either. Turning up late, ghosting recruiters, or accepting interviews you never intend to attend says just as much about your own professionalism.

Respect is a two-way street, and it doesn’t stop the moment you’ve got the job either. If you’ve already lived through a process that left you cold, it’s worth a read my piece on ‘5 Ways to Turn Around a Bad Job Interview’, because a rough start doesn’t always have to be the end of the story.

5. Nobody can tell you what success looks like

Here’s one of my favourite interview questions to ask, and also one of the biggest red flags if it can’t be answered clearly.

“What would success look like in this role after six or twelve months?”

The answer tells you everything. Strong organisations know exactly what they’re hiring someone to achieve. Weak ones talk in generalities, buzzwords, and vague expectations.

If success can’t be defined going in, don’t be surprised when performance can’t be measured fairly later. That’s usually where the toxic domino effect starts.

Worth remembering…

An interview isn’t designed for a company to choose a candidate, nor is it simply a candidate trying to land a job either. It’s a mutual assessment of whether two parties can build something that’s successful.

When interviews become one-sided, ego-driven, or purely transactional, everybody loses. Companies lose good people. Candidates end up in the wrong environment. And both sides spend the next six months wondering why it didn’t work, or worse, staying anyway and wondering ‘when is the right time to change jobs?’.

The stakes are bigger than any single hire too. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report puts global employee engagement at its lowest point since 2020 and estimates the cost of that disengagement at around ten trillion dollars in lost productivity worldwide. A lot of that starts with a mismatch that was visible from the very first conversation, if anyone had been paying attention.

Sometimes the biggest interview win isn’t the offer. It’s spotting the red flags early enough to walk away.