As a leader, a positive workplace culture is important to maintain, which means that it is essential to hire the right people on to your team. A toxic influence on your team can come in the form of an entitled worker. Entitled workers believe that they are deserving of preferential treatment which can cause conflict on your team. One of the best ways to deal with an entitled employee, is to avoid hiring them in the first place. Here is a list of essential interview questions to avoid hiring entitled workers.
What is an entitled employee?
An entitled employee is someone who expects preferential treatment for projects, employment perks, and/or schedule flexibility due to their high self regard. This employee believes that they have an automatic right to privileged treatment at work from their coworkers and leadership.
The reason that these demands are so off putting is that it is out of line with the employee’s actual performance or willingness to “put in the time” with grunt work tasks or projects. The entitled employee does not factor in the impact to the organization or their coworkers in their demands. It doesn’t matter if their expectations are fair to everyone, this is what the employee expects.
Employee entitlement is linked to narcissistic behavior and the belief that one is special and deserves preferential treatment. This leads to a disconnect between the employee and the manager because of the employee’s views on the “psychological contract” or the mutual agreement regarding the expectations and obligations of their employment.
How they can be dangerous for your team – and a pain for you!
This entitled behavior is more than annoying – it can be a poison pill for your team. You need to screen for red flags before you call around for references. Remember, they only give you the names of their positive references!
Research shows that entitled workers will display negative behavior which will result in conflict with their coworkers and with you as their leader who is not giving them what they feel they deserve.
Conflict amplifies on your team when other co-workers start to resent the entitled employee. Some of the potential conflict points are:
- The team is resentful that the entitled employee gets special perks that they don’t deserve because they complain
- Entitled employees lack reciprocity for favors, like shift trades or help with projects, so tensions mount when there is no “pay back”
- Some employees will get upset about this employee going against the office “norms” with their entitled demands and will exclude the entitled employee from their group
Because the entitled employee believes that they are owed something, they will become increasingly disengaged if they do not receive it. They are also less satisfied at their job and may always be looking elsewhere since you are so unfair. Not that you would necessarily be upset to see them go, but the lead up could do some damage.
Already have an entitled worker on your team? Here’s a step by step guide for how to manage an entitled worker on your team.
Traits to look out for during an interview
When it comes to interviewing and entitled worker, you need to know what to look out for by understanding how entitled workers think. Here are some of the common beliefs that a potential entitled employee may hold:
- Expects monetary rewards for average work
- Assumes they will have regular promotions
- Can demand work that is interesting to me and delegate boring work to others
- Take breaks whenever it suits them
- The ability to take vacation or personal days whenever they want
- The entire team should accommodate personal circumstances
- It’s my boss’ fault if I don’t perform my job requirements
- I only want to work in highly visible positions in the organization
- I believe I have exceptional skills or abilities and deserve to be paid more than others
Overall, an entitled employee will believe that they are deserving of preferential treatment, that they deserve rewards, are focused on themselves rather than the team, and have a high self-regard. Remember, people are on their best behavior during an interview, you need to use the best interview questions to raise the red flags for someone who will create conflict on your team with their entitled attitude.
Want some other great interview questions to find red flags for problem employees? Here are some essential interview questions to help avoid hiring toxic workers!
Tips for great interview questions and how to conduct yourself during an interview
You need to be strategic when deciding on what interview questions to ask since you have a limited number that you can ask. It’s best to choose several personality revealing questions that create opportunities for red flags. Add a few of the questions below that will best fit your industry and need on your team.
A great piece of advice I received about interviewing was to leave “thoughtful pauses’” to see if they will fill in with more answers or explanations. This has proven to be good advice because I have had numerous people talk themselves out of a job by waiting for the real opinions, and motivations to rise to the surface.
Sample interview questions to avoid hiring entitled employees
There are 4 major factors that you can cover in interview questions where you can identify if someone is potentially going to be an entitled employee in the future. These questions will cover the topics if they believe they deserve preferential treatment, reward as a right, are only focused on themselves, or have an excessive self regard.
Go ahead and mix and match these questions within your usual interview panel questions depending on your industry and what you are looking for in an ideal candidate.
Interview Question 1:
Tell me about a time that you were on a team where you had to support a colleague to complete the work because they were not able to give it their full attention due to a family circumstance. How did you handle it?
Answer:
An entitled employee is very focused on themselves and wants special treatment. As a result, they have a self-serving attribution bias. This leads them to believe that employers should accommodate their personal circumstances and are quick to point blame at the employer rather than themselves when they do not meet work expectation. With this question, you flip it on them and see if they would be understanding of someone else having a challenging personal circumstance. You can also modify this question to fit your industry a bit, such as, they ‘couldn’t stay late leading up to a product launch because they were caring for a sick family member’.
A satisfactory answer would be for the candidate to respond that they are a team player and would understand and be supportive.
Red flags would be if they chime in about all of the times they expected accommodation (and evaluate the validity of those) themselves in this scenario. Or have a “that person will owe me” attitude.
Interview Question 2:
Tell me about a time that you were not challenged at work or had a boring work assignment. How did you handle it?
Answer:
The entitled employee may also only want interesting work, and are more than happy to delegate boring jobs away. See how they answer this question. If they say that they went to their boss and requested a better assignment this could be a red flag. If they said that they deserve more interesting or hard work because they are a great performer this is also a red flag.
The best answer is if the candidate admits that they can’t always have interesting work and will either ride it out, attempt to learn a new skills, or mentor others who may be more challenged. If they say that they will speak with their boss for a better assignment at a later date, reflect on their underlying attitude for entitlement for a better assignment. Do they demand a better assignment, or will speak to their boss about their goals and how they would like to work on a project that will support them? It’s all about context here.
Interview Question 3:
Tell me about a time where you felt that a course of action was best, but your coworkers disagreed with you. Did you eventually come around to their way of thinking, or did you explain your position to get them on board?
Answer:
An entitled employee is very focused on themselves and thinks that they are special because they are very smart. They could potentially be smart, but how do they handle themselves when they are at an impasse with a coworker?
Entitled employees are not good team players and will likely steamroll over their colleagues by taking issues to management right away or will not consider the other’s point of view. An ideal candidate would seek to find out why a colleague is taking a different position and entertain their view. They will explain this position and attempt to work something out before taking it to leadership.
Interview Question 4 :
Have you ever reported a concern with a fellow employee’s performance to your manager? Did you speak with them first? How did you phrase it with your manager?
Answer:
An entitled employee may have the perception that they have such a large value to the organization that they believe that they need to be rewarded for being unique or special. To make themselves stand out, they can drag their coworkers down to look great in comparison.
Evaluate how petty the concern was that they brought forward. See if they try and talk themselves up that they would “never do such actions”.
A good candidate would only bring a complaint to their manager if they tried to speak with the colleague and failed to come to a resolution. It would not be a petty issue either, but one where it directly impacted their work completion or work quality.
Question 5:
Has there been a time where you haven’t met a performance metric? What was it? How did you go about improving?
Answer:
Entitled workers are quick to blame others and still expect automatic rewards for mediocre work. Red flag answers involve a lot of excuses as to why the performance metric was unfair (you be the judge here), and why it wasn’t their fault. They may even say that their boss is at fault. Be on high alert if they gripe that they missed a bonus or raise.
A good candidate will explain reasonably why a metric was missed and list the rationale as to why. You know your industry so you can gauge the reasonableness of it. A good candidate will be able to tell you their action plan for follow up and won’t gripe about unfair the whole thing was.
When it comes to writing interview questions to avoid hiring entitled workers, a few minutes of your time is worth the headache that an entitled worker will cause you and your team in the future. Remember, the easiest ways to deal with an entitled worker is to avoid hiring them in the first place.