Tell me if this has ever happened to you:

You go into an interview and the hiring managers are raving about how great of a place XYZ Corporation is and how many people really want to work for them. You hear about the job duties, some of the challenges (which are really small) and all of the great opportunities that abound at XYZ. They tell you they are on solid financial footing and that you don’t need to worry about it. You are excited as you leave the interview hoping for the job.

You get a call a week later and they want to offer you the job. The salary is a bit lower than you had hoped but the opportunity sounds great and they say they give reviews every six months for good performance. You accept and are ready to really shine. You put in your notice at your old job and say goodbye and you start your new job.

Here is the problem: the new job is nothing like they described! Your job duties are extremely limited (as well as future opportunities), the managers don’t act the same way they did during the interview, and the challenges are enormous. Worst yet, the company is on a very shaky financial foundation. There are talks of cutbacks and guess who is the low man on the totem pole?

If you would have known this coming in, you would have never accepted. Now you’re stuck, at least until you can find another job. That is, if you don’t get cut before than.

My natural inclination in HR is to be up front and honest with candidates about the company and its internal and external challenges. This is a best practice that I strongly encourage people in hiring positions to use. You have to lay it out and let the person decide whether they really want it or not.

Some hiring managers are extremely hesitant to do this. I understand it because you don’t want to lose a good candidate because you really undersell a position. At the same time though, you have to acknowledge deficiencies, especially when a candidate asks directly.

I did recruiting for a call center and one of the things I worked on, especially during the phone interview was stating very clearly that this was primarily a position where you need to be available to phone between 6-7 hours a day. So if they were hesitant on that very realistic part of the job, I would jump on it and research further to figure out if they have reservations.

You obviously need to sell the positive end of your work environment for certain but you also need to take a balanced approach. Otherwise, your bad turnover can dramatically go up. And you certainly don’t want that, no matter how easy it is to recruit in this environment.