Is it OK to admit that I’m interviewing with other companies during an interview?

No. I highly recommend against this. When I see people do it, it never works out.

Do your best job as if you're going to be there forever, until you give your notice. Do your best on knowledge transfers and leave on good terms.

But don't let your company know you're shopping around. When you boil off all the company bullshit, unless you're at mid/upper management, your relation is always purely transactional.

@djsumdog Thanks for the feedback. I don’t mean my current company.

Often times during interviews, the topic of whether the candidate is applying and interviewing with other companies comes up. My original question was for this scenario.

I‘m always open about that. Both my company and the one where I have an interview should know that I also have other interviews.
This is my angle for getting more money out of it.
Usually they want me after the interview, and they are prepared to pay more because of competing offers.

IMO: Only if they ask.

I consider it leverage. If they want my labor badly enough, they shouldn’t have a problem competing for it the same way I’m competing for a job with other job seekers.

And if they don’t, okay. Been a pleasure. Off I go to other interviews.

Otherwise I’m not volunteering that info.

From an integrity point of view, if they ask, be honest.

Other than that, keep those details to yourself.

Make the interviewer believe you're hungry, ready to work, and ready to take their company to the next level. Make him/her think to themselves "OMG...this guy/gal is going to make us millionaires...no...billionaires!"

That's just me. I want the candidate to be hungry, ready to work, wanting to provide value, and a passion for serving customers/people.

Who won't make the cut? Candidates who are wishy-washy, only interviewing because they saw the ad in the paper, and has no knowledge of the company/culture.

Good luck!

@mojo2012 This guy knows what he's talking about, done it before and it works as expected.

If they ask, then tell them. Good way to get them to offer more or stop dragging their feet if the process is going slowly.

I was interviewing for two different positions at a company where I already worked (I was tier 1 tech support and wanted to move into the dev side). I wanted one of the positions a lot more than the other one, but I would have taken either just to get out of the call center. The final interviewer for the position I really wanted was dragging his feet, kept delaying the interview for like a month. Finally I sent an email saying that I already had an offer for another position and was prepared to take it, even though I would prefer the position he was interviewing me for.

I had my last interview the next day and a job offer right after that. Really lit a fire under him lol.

They interview other candidates for same position right? Why you wouldn't have another interview at another company. There is nothing wrong about that. Be open about it if they ask.

This is an extremely indiscrete question and you should treat it as if they asked about your love life. Lie with a straight face, call it out, stand up and leave or answer honestly accordingly.

I tend to say that I'm not interviewing anywhere else because I've never been in a position to call it out, but the choice is basically whether to get low-balled because they're in a position of power and this is how the world works or to get low-balled or rejected because you obviously aren't dedicated enough.

Note that I have limited experience of 2 years and even more limited experience with success.

This is the perfect opportunity to look in demand/ get leverage. Even if I’m not interviewing with other shops I will make it up..say I’m in early stages whatever..usually they ask the question if they’re interested and if they’re interested they’ll act on it.. people way too honest here..it’s a game ..get one up on the fuckers dammit!

Yeah, but only if they ask or seem to have an interest. Otherwise they probably guess you do. There's quite a competition for devs here in Sweden, so I find whoever is hiring is usually pretty eager to actually hire when they've got a promising candidate. They already know that whoever they're interviewing probably have a bunch of other offers and just as many recruiters willing to give a good offer any minute.

It's a stupid question that deserves a stupid answer. But that might appear rude.
If you're actively looking for a job, then no shit, of course you applied elsewhere. Just as they're interviewing other candidates. Even if you're not you probably still have a job which competes with them.
They might want to know whether you have another offer (soon) to decide on, to figure how much time they can take - and that's understandable. But it's a shitty proxy question and I don't like those.

I recently got my first dev job. And the company where I got hired asked me if I had other interviews during my first interview. I had 2 other interviews lined up and I told them that. They sent me a job offer literally 5 minutes after my 2nd interview with them. In my obviously very limited experience, saying you have other interviews can help create scarcity and fomo and then you can leverage that.

yes. changing our complete culture to actually _value_ honesty instead of just blabbing about it is a necessary step we have to take if we, as a species, at some point in the future, want to be NOT complete and utter garbage.

It's perfectly natural to apply for multiple jobs at the same time!

I wouldn't think it was a negative at all.

No need to hide it either, you can be honest. I view an interview as much as the candidate promoting themselves as us promoting our company. Sometimes we're unsure of which areas to highlight (tech stack, work process, the variety of projects, learning opportunities etc) so if someone says "I'm also interested in moving to company X because they let you try a lot of different tech stacks" we could talk about opportunities to work on different projects with us. Or if someone says "I'm interested in this other company because I'd get to focus on a single project" we can see if we can tailor a similar role at our company.

This is of course stuff one can figure out without talking about other companies - but quite often it really helps narrow down what's most important to the candidate by talking about their other alternatives.

@latisfeire

Honestly, if companies scorn at your other applications, you're probably better off without them.

Anyone actually believing they were the only one worth your time, is highly likely to exercise abusive traits.

Massive red flag.