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One of the worst mistakes I ever made applying for a job was ignoring red flags during the job interview process. Looking back, there were several things that made me uneasy. But I was enamored with how the company described its culture, the people, and the role, and so I ignored them. As it turned out, all of those things were poorly defined or a far cry from what was promised. I had left a toxic work environment only to end up in an equally bad situation. Sometimes, as job seekers, were so desperate to escape our current situations that we forget job interviews are a two-way street. We overfocus on performing well during interviews and forget to ask questions about the company or role (or ask only surface-level questions). {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/04\/workbetter-logo.png","headline":"Work Better","description":"Thoughts on the future of work, career pivots, and why work shouldn't suck, by Anna Burgess Yang. To learn more visit workbetter.media.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.workbetter.media","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} But the more you can try to suss out during the interview process, the better shape youll be in when deciding whether or not to accept or decline an offer. Here are some best practices. Red flags Some companies are not great at writing job descriptionsor theyll write perfect versions of a role that dont reflect reality. When youre talking to the hiring manager, ask about day-to-day responsibilities. The manager should have a crystal clear idea of what youre expected to do, even if the description is, You will wear a lot of hats. Ive worked for many small companies where I was expected to adjust to an ever-changing role. That can be fine, as long as you know upfront and your performance is evaluated accordingly. If the company only has a vague idea of what it needs from the role, odds are it won’t be possible for you to meet expectations. Its also a red flag if the company asks you to put a significant amount of work into the interview process. During the first interview, you should ask how many additional interviews you can expect. Three half-hour interviews total? Probably fine. Five hour-long interviews, plus a lengthy, unpaid test assignment? That company doesnt value your time, has trouble making decisions, or both. What to ask the interviewer Youll want to ask for details about the team structure and the type of work youll be doing. These basic questions will help you determine if its a job youd enjoy. But a few probing questions can help you learn more about the company itself. Why is this role open? Is the company in growth mode and needs to add to the team? Did the prior person leave because they accepted their dream job? Or has the company experienced a lot of turnover? How flexible is the work environment? If flexibility is important to you, youll want to ask the right questions. Some companies claim to be flexible when, in reality, they aren’t. A good question to ask is whether people work synchronously or asynchronously. If people work synchronously, the company is probably less flexible. You can also ask how many meetings you can expect per week, which will impact your flexibility. How is feedback given? This ties into how well the role is defined. Does the company have a formal review process? If so, how often? You want to make sure you can meet expectations, even if expectations are ever-changing at a small company. Dont end up in the same bad job situation Companies will likely look at your LinkedIn profile and ask for references, trying to determine what kind of an employee you are. You should do the same. Check Glassdoor, but read reviews with a grain of salt. Employees of small companies may be afraid to leave reviews, and sometimes reviews are skewed toward employees who had negative experiences. You can also check LinkedIn. Find former employees and look at how long they were with the company. One employee with a short tenure doesnt say much, but lots of turnover is a red flag. If youre comfortable, you could even send a DM to a former employee and ask about their experience. As a job seeker, its your version of checking references. Above all, dont ignore your gut. If you get a bad vibe during the interview, it will probably be magnified once youre hired. Unless youre desperate for a new role, its better to keep looking than to end up in a job you regret. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/04\/workbetter-logo.png","headline":"Work Better","description":"Thoughts on the future of work, career pivots, and why work shouldn't suck, by Anna Burgess Yang. To learn more visit workbetter.media.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.workbetter.media","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} Anna Burgess Yang
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E-Commerce
U.S. President Donald Trump will arrive Sunday for a Group of Seven summit in a country he has suggested should be annexed and as he wages a trade war with America’s longstanding allies.Trump’s calls to make Canada the 51st U.S. state have infuriated Canadians, and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who won his office by pledging to confront the U.S. president’s increased aggression, now hosts the G7 summit.Carney asserted this week that Washington no longer plays a predominant role on the world stage, imposing tariffs for access to its markets and reducing its contributions to collective security.Carney has decided to abandon the annual practice of issuing a lengthy joint statement, or communiqué, at the summit’s conclusion as French President Emmanuel Macron did at the G7 summit in France in 2019.The document typically outlines the consensus reached by leaders on summit issues and provides a roadmap for how they plan to tackle them.Trump roiled the 2017 meeting in Italy over the climate change passage in that summit’s final statement. He then withdrew his support from the 2018 communiqué after complaining he had been slighted by then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the host that year.The leaders of the world’s richest countries begin arriving Sunday in the resort town of Kananaskis, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies. Who will attend The Group of Seven comprises Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Britain. The European Union also attends as well as other heads of state who are not part of the G7 but have been invited by Carney.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend and is expected to meet with Trump, a reunion coming just months after their contentious Oval Office encounter, which laid bare the risks of having a meeting with the U.S. president.Other world leaders will be meeting with Trump both in a group setting and for bilateral talks, which are often precarious as foreign leaders must navigate between placating and confronting him.“Anything could happen. The Canadians would be crazy not to anticipate something. We can’t tell. That’s Trump stock and trade. He likes to keep everyone guessing,” said Robert Bothwell, a University of Toronto professor of Canadian history and international relations.“It all depends what kind of theater he’s going to want to have,” he said.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will attend and said she expects to have her first in-person meeting with Trump. On his way to Canada, Macron is making a notable stop in Greenland, the semi autonomous Danish territory that the U.S. president has also suggested annexing.Among the other newcomers are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.Starmer will meet with Carney on Saturday in Ottawa before flying to Alberta.Carney also invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite accusations from Canada’s national police force that agents of Modi’s government were involved in “widespread” violence in Canada.Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, was invited but will not attend. Will Trump upstage this G7 too? The 2018 G7 summit in Quebec was thrown into disarray after Trump called Trudeau “dishonest” and “weak,” while complaining that he had been blindsided by Trudeau’s criticism of Trump’s tariff threats at a summit-ending news conference. Trump pulled out of the G7 group statement just as it was released.“We weren’t too happy because we thought we managed to pull off a pretty good summit,” said Peter Boehm, Canada’s deputy minister for the Quebec summit.” The reactionand I was with Mr. Trudeau at the timewas a bit of disbelief.”Boehm expects a chair’s summary from Carney this year instead of a joint statement from the leaders.During the Quebec summit, Trump also insisted on Russia’s readmission to the elite group, from which it was ousted in 2014 following President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea.“Trump raised that at the foreign policy dinner,” Boehm recalled. “It was a bit awkward because British Prime Minister Theresa May was there and some British citizens had just been killed by Russian operatives using a toxic agent.”Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were targeted in a nerve agent attack a few months before the Quebec summit in the English city of Salisbury. Looming tariffs U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said that Carney has been quietly holding direct talks with Trump about a trade deal in the lead up to the summit. Separately, top Canadian cabinet ministers have also been in Washington for negotiations in recent weeks.Trade tensions may be unavoidable. The United States runs trade deficits with all G7 countries except the United Kingdom. In an effort to balance what he describes as America’s lopsided trade relations, Trump has imposed 10% import taxestariffson almost every country in the world. He also announced bigger tariffs, then suspended them, on countries that sell more to the United States than they buy.“The big X Factor (is) the looming tariffs,” said Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The G7 is supposed to provide global economic governance. And the way the Europeans see it right now is that the country that’s the source of major instability in global economic affairs is the United States.”Trump’s trade wars are already threatening the world economy. The World Bank on Tuesday sharply downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year, citing “a substantial rise in trade barriers.” A prelude to NATO summit NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will attend the G7 meeting ahead of this month’s NATO summit and has said most U.S. allies in the alliance endorse Trump’s demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs.Carney said this week Canada would meet NATO’s current 2% target but seemed to suggest he would not support 5%, saying his goal is to protect Canadians, and not to satisfy NATO accountants. Why such a remote location Law enforcement overseeing security expect large protests but say protesters won’t be able to get anywhere near Kananaskis, as access roads to the summit will be closed to the public.The Mounties say there will be designated G7 demonstration zones in Calgary and Banff, Alberta that will have live audio and video feeds, which will be broadcast to G7 leaders and delegations at the summit. Kananaskis also hosted a G8 summit in 2002. Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report. Rob Gillies, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Megababe and Evvy make personal care and health-related products that, at some point, will be needed by at least half the population. But these companies have had to overcome one hurdle after another in the years since they launched. Despite the relative successes of their companiesparticularly with identifying markets for products that address taboo topics head-onthese problems still persist, the founders said during a panel discussion at Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies Summit in New York last week. We get banned on social media advertising all the time, said Priyanka Jain, cofounder and CEO of Evvy, a women’s health company thats focused primarily on the vaginal microbiome. We get banned, too, added Katie Sturino, founder of Megababe, which sells more than 45 products mostly aimed at addressing issues in the nether regions. While a hemorrhoid cream named Butt Stuff, in the case of Megababe, or Evvys use of the words vaginal microbiome or pelvic floor raise alarm bells for social media companies, the founders pointed out that advertising for erectile dysfunction medication and pornography seemingly do not. But both women are, by now, accustomed to convincing stakeholders of all varieties that theres a sizable and viable market for their products. The taboo and stigmatized areas are probably some of the largest opportunity spaces because, by definition, they are areas that have been underserved, Jain told the audience. You have to push past the uncanny valley or that difficult time, but then you actually have a higher upside on the other side because it’s likely an unserved market with a lot of need. ‘No one wants this’ By the time Sturino launched Megababe in 2017, she had amassed a social media following that was about 70,000 strong, and she would ask her community of followers each spring what products they planned to use for thigh chafe. Naturally, when she started the brand for that community, the companys anti-chafing stick was one of its first products. But she heard a common refrain from people in the beauty industry. It was a lot of: No one wants this, Sturino recalled. Megababe ranks No. 2 on Fast Companys list of the Most Innovative Companies in Beauty for 2025. Undeterred, she and her startup team created 20,000 units of products. And we actually sold through our entire first run of inventory in the first month we launched. Leading with education Meanwhile, when Jain cofounded Evvy about four years ago, she told the audience there were two challenges that proved to be an uphill battle. One was that we were building a women’s health company, which people inherently believed was niche, that it was a small market, Jain said. And then it was the fact that obviously we were starting a vagina company. Then, as now, Jain said Evvys marketing strategy is providing education informationincluding a stat she referenced that vaginal discomfort is the leading reason why women seek healthcare advice in the United States. When fundraising, she said she focused on how massive the market was for products that werent solving the real problem. Look at all of the money that women are spending on wipes, washes, suppositories, whatever will make their vagina smell like a flower because there’s this fundamental root problem that isn’t being solved for them, she said of those conversations. It was very much starting with the data, starting with the numbers, and frankly not talking about the moral rightness of investing in women’s health. Social media insights In its early days, Evvy started a TikTok channel and racked up millions of views because, Jain said, people were actively searching for information about vaginal health. Whats more, the company has used three guiding principles to inform its product lineup: Provide what patients actually want, identify the best science, and provide education when theres either a gap or stigma. While Evvys mission quickly resonated with consumers, Jain advised that entrepreneurs may need to take a different approach to connect on a business level with investors. Lead with the data and lead with the numbers. And even though Megababe is sold by major retailers, Sturino continues to lean on her community of social media followers, now numbering 800,000-plus on Instagram alone. Its there that she might test product ideas that will bring a solution to women who are already dealing with an issueincluding the aforementioned hemorrhoid cream. She said its helpful if other entrepreneurs with similar taboo-tackling business ideas are tackling a problem they know is real. You have to keep going and believing in yourself, she said.
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E-Commerce
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