9. Are you considered a top performer at your current job?
Hang up if you hear this, or shut the door loudly. It’s not the recruiter’s duty to give you tests or to ask about your experience at your current or previous workplace. It just doesn’t make sense why someone tasked with finding you a job would be interested in things like this from your past. This is too nosy and is, by chance, an excellent way to bust annoying and unskilled recruiters.
You probably know this, but it’s still important to note – being a top performer in one workplace doesn’t mean you’re going to be the best in the other one. In fact, your recruiter has the job of getting to know you and using his assessment of you and some basic info to help you land a job. Anything aside from that is just pushing it too hard. It isn’t their job to correlate your past performance to your future options.
There are many instances in which a top executive goes to another company for a pay rise and flops epically because they just can’t find their place. Every HR executive and interviewer knows that hiring a stranger into a company holds an amount of risk, no matter the previous accolades of the potential employee. Therefore, it might be illogical for an employer to ask you about you being a top performer, let alone a search consultant.
The only performance questions should be related to facts provided by the employer to the recruiter. Working hours, traveling conditions and rewards, if known, should be the only factors that you would have to take into account when it comes to your performance.