Smooth talking is a red flag I see in job candidates [Video]

Omar Asali isn’t keen on hiring smooth talkers.

Workers who are too self-promotional and careful to say the “right words” usually look out for themselves, rather than their organization or the people around them — a red flag in the recruitment process, says Asali, 53, the CEO of eco-focused packaging company Ranpak.

“You always have to be careful with people that are very smooth talkers and very promotional,” says Asali, who’s been running Ranpak — which has a market value of $661.06 million, as of Monday afternoon — since 2019. “I’m not hiring people because their presentation skills are phenomenal. I’m hiring them typically because I need certain tasks and certain jobs done.”

At such a large company, Asali isn’t always involved in every single hiring decision. But when he hires “very senior executives,” he makes a point of discussing both work-related and non-work related topics with candidates. The better he gets to know them, the more easily he can identify …