I’ve been part of a small number of hiring decisions where relocation was involved. There were a lot of failures exactly like this article talks about: Candidates who will say anything in the interview and even signal that they’ll accept any average salary as long as you’ll take care of their relocation were, in my experience, not interested in doing the work after they got here. Taking the job was a means to an end (getting to their destination) and once they arrived they were either looking for the next job or too busy traveling around their new location to do work.
We tried to mitigate this with clauses requiring them to pay back relocation expenses if they left within N months of arrival, but this didn’t work. They would resign the week after that timer expired or, worse, would start trying to get laid off through poor performance as a way to avoid that clause.
The best fits for relocation were opposite of what I would have thought: The people most hesitant to relocate were the most successful, both at the job and in establishing their new social life outside of work in the new location. They were relocating and taking jobs for the right reasons.
Most people want to have a job set up before they move to a new city.
This is obvious for most people... generally a bad financial idea to move to a new city without a job. But, primarily taking a job just to move to a new city seems odd to me. I guess I just prioritize a job I want to work at over a city I live in.
Most people don't prioritize work over everything else. They move toward the life they want and try to find a job that supports it.
People move to be closer to friends and family or to be in a city they like more.
A lot of applicants requesting relocation were moving because their spouse got a job in the city and they had to move, too.
Meanwhile, if your spouse is moving for a job, it seems bizarre that a response on "why do you want to relocate" wouldn't just be some form of "my spouse got a job here, so I will be living here now".
Always be marketing what you can/will/have done for the company to bring value, not what the company can do for you.
-> Subordinate yourself to the desires of capital in all areas.
-> Suppress the self.
-> Become a true human resource. You are seeking to sell a large chunk of your life, and the buyers don't want scratched or dented goods. Desires of your own are flaws in the product you are selling.
This is, sadly, sound advice, but I think it's important to reflect on what this means about how incidental human flourishing is in our current political economy.
A lot of applicants do it. The skill of interviewing is to get a sense of what the true situation is underneath what the candidate is saying with their words. These candidates who show up and do the “subordinate yourself to the desires of capital in all areas” schtick are plentiful. It doesn’t fool an experienced interviewer, so they’re going to be evaluating whether or not you can do the job without becoming a problem based on whatever other signals they can get. The candidate’s words are almost a no-op, other than a slight signal that they have a tendency to blow smoke instead of having real conversations.
Why do you want a job?, Why do you want to relocate?, Why do you want to work here?, etc. are BS "no-op" questions that are not relevant to the skills that they are promoting.
If an interviewer asks these types of questions, they are literally showcasing that this part of the interview is a BS "Subordinate yourself to the desires of capital in all areas" conversation. You will predictably get the "no-op" answers you asked for.
The interviewer always sets the tone of the meeting. You can't complain when they chose to play along. If you want a real conversation, you need to make it amply clear.
The interview is to determine their skills.
Some candidates will talk about their work history for 30 minutes and you leave the room with no real idea what they did. They tell you they created synergies and did cross-functional coordination with stakeholders in a metrics-driven blah blah blah. You receive no usable information about what they did, what they can do, or how much of the thing they talked about was due to their work. All you know is that they can talk a lot.
If they're applying to a dysfunctional vibes-based workplace then delivering an empty vibes-based interview can work. Smart people actively try to filter themselves out of those companies, not into them.
I'm trying to explain that it's easy to spot the fakers.
When you do a lot of interviews you see a lot of candidates who follow the advice above. Unless it's your first month of doing interviews, it's really easy to see right through.
The candidates never think they're coming off as fake, though.
Really skilled interviewers can bait these candidates into telling little half-truths and inconsistencies that reveal their game.
1) Be truthful, and say the main reason you want the job is the money and the visa. You will be looked over as not having enough passion for the work.
2) Lie completely and say your number one motivation is adtech, something you would prostrate yourself to do in slum conditions if necessary. You will be sussed out as a faker.
3) Come up with some mixture of the two that the company can believe. If you can fool them into thinking you are at least somewhat motivated by the chance to work on their awful product, but also that there is truthfully some other motivation, you come across as a good bet and might not be thrown out of the pipeline.
I worked in multiple companies in my multi-decade career, including FAANG (or whatever acronym is used now). I was even an intervewer for one of those
The people that give the sanitized calculated responses are actually what employers are typically looking for. It shows the candidate is willing to do the job without causing problems by confirming as a good worker bee.
Your workplace is not somewhere for real conversations.
This seems pretty straightforward, but I guess people like OP are exposed to a lot of bad interviewees by nature of their job.