2022: How and Why do I interview people the way I do.
I believe it’s fair to say most people, whether interviewer or interviewee, myself included, believe interviewing is broken. If you aren’t convinced by my one-sentence statement, check out this podcast — “Recruiting is a Cluster” hosted by my good friend Adrian Russo.
Let's be honest, this was true before the “Great Resignation”, “The Great Reshuffle”, or whatever you would like to call the current state of affairs; however, if we don’t understand how we got here, we’re doomed to repeat our mistakes.
The before times:
Many things are wrong here. Most importantly though the interviewer and the interviewee are NOT equal and they do not have the same goal or possibly even the same set of facts. If that doesn’t lead to poor, uniformed decisions, then nothing does. Put this in our “parking lot” we’ll come back to it later.
What is the goal of an interview? How do you know when you’re done? How do you measure the success of the interview?
I promise its not whether a job offer is made, a candidate takes an under market salary, or you landed a unicorn possibly at great expense. These are short term things, an arguably without any win conditions aka a zero sum game. (I recommend Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny if you would like to learn about “non-zero-sum” games)
The world could try to collectively, iteratively, and “Equitably” fix all this. It hasn’t in the last 42 years and more. I argue, its simply easier to just state what good actually looks like and strive for it. For many this is not possible because they have never seen what “good looks like” (tm). That’s entirely fair too.
Many candidates have never been interviewers. Many interviewers are doing it for their FIRST time LIVE. Many with zero training and just guessing.
Le sigh.
I’m incredibly thankful to have actually been trained in interviewing. Yes, that's a real thing — Behavioral, Case Studies, Cross Calibrations, Orals, Written, Homework, and Live fire exercises, Panels, 1–1s from Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH) and Capital One (Fortune 99).
No-one, including me is perfect. Mistakes happen. People have good days and bad days too.
AN INTERVIEW IS THE SETTING LEAST LIKELY TO RESEMBLE ON THE JOB SCENARIOS. Let that sink in for five minutes. Short of just handing out trial periods it likely never will be.
What good looks like:
“Trust and transparency result in GOOD equitable decisions.”
Eight simple words and you can quote me on that.
Now let me ask you some questions about what happens in an interview typically.
Why did you quit your job? What do you make right now? Can you interview for 8 hours today without a break? Can you talk to these other 14 people next? Do you know how do to this or that (esoteric thing)? The list goes on.
These do not build trust. No way, no how. In fact, I argue, they critically damage it. I’d like to see you get out of an interview without being asked, “What do you look for in a candidate?” If you don’t say Emotional Intelligence (EQ), the gig is probably toast.
This is also a true story. What do you do if a billionaire CEO tell you, “Well you worked at X, so you are obviously damaged and we’ll have to fix you.” At the time I was in a job transition so I dutifully finished the interview. Mistake. What if I had gotten an offer? That would probably be worse and I might need therapy now.
Time is the one commodity that is universally finite. If its a bad situation, mutually agree to cut it short and part on good terms. Don’t force it.
Did you have to Guess what’s valuable to me and how I am rating you? That’s a bummer. What if you had it and it never came up because I made you guess. Did you get down rated because you’re missing 1 out of 50 skills? I’ll bet 35 of those you’d never use in the role.
The Good Questions
What do you want to learn? What options and levers would help you deliver the most value? How do you like to be recognized for success? What drives you? What do you want people to say about you? What works best for you when building relationships? What kind of support do you want? What kind of support do you NOT want? How do you work best? Why?
Its not the hiring managers job ,typically, to assess job skills. Trust your team to do that. Spend the time explaining the climate and environment. Explain why this role is here and how it came to be. Explain the interview process and why it is what it is. Explain the people you will talk to and why its those people. Share insights about these people so downstream interviews do not start from scratch.Explain the political situation. Explain the team make up. Explain the needs of the team. Focus on personality not everyone wants to be a leader. A team full of leaders (Type As) is likely going to just argue (note, I did not say discourse). Ask about hobbies, but not because you want them for the candidate in this role or see how much free time someone has. Because you care. Because you invest in people.
A good friend of mine, Mario Biviano, and someone I’ve worked directly with before, is looking for his next venture. He said this on Linked In just recently, “Your word is your bond.” Breaking it on your first meeting is not a good start.
I guarantee you that no matter who you hire, if in the first 30, 60, 90 days the job isn’t what was outlined or expected, even if the employee stays, the productivity is decreased. What if they could have referred an army of hard workers? (They probably will not now).
When does the interview end?
If you said at the end of the process or at the end of the hour, congratulations you are really NOT CORRECT. It never ends. Every, single, day on the job is one, especially the first one AND the last one.
“It matters just as much how you feel the day you are hired as the day you leave.”
Now about those “technical” questions.
What is it ok that a Mid Level person doesn’t know for this role? I bet you don’t know. I struggle with this myself. Entry level is easy. Everything. Senior is NOT everything, but its a solid foundation on the things you like did 100 times a day 7 days a week for the last 2–3 years in this industry. Mid is tough.
Get good at change. Continuous learning IS change.
Why do I care what you could do last year? It might not even be a thing in 6 months. We live at a digitally enabled pace and things change. I’m recognized in the Cloud, Data, and AI/ML industries time and time over. I maybe know 40–50 of the 200+ Amazon Web Services (AWS). I even teach them resulting in others getting certifications. I promise you I’m going to have to learn SEVERAL things at each role to deliver value with AWS.
What are you going to do different in your next discussion (I didn’t say interview). Comment below.
About the author
I’ve likely conducted north of 1,000 interviews since 2006. That’s only 4 a month. Yes, I’m still hiring like gangbusters and it IS a candidates market right now.
