Interview 101
Interview 101
A basic framework for the interview process
TL;DR
Interviewing is an art rather than a science. There are people who have a very intuitive approach to assessing others during interviews, which I can appreciate. In no other space do I believe in the God of the gaps more than in the realm of human interaction. Intuition has lead to some of my best hires and to some of the worst. So irrespective of your preference for intuition, being aware of a framework and being mindful of potential biases can help avoid bad outcomes.
*Note that hiring and your approach to talent should be different at various stages of your business’ maturity. I will devote a post to this topic separately. This post is very much focused on the basic framework to use for the interview process.
Mindfulness
Yes, it’s a word that unjustly comes loaded with a lot of new age self-help book baggage but bear with me. When it comes to human interaction a lot of things happen at any given time. Demystifying human interactions takes away from the magic of love at first sight or that warm feeling of familiarity you could have towards a random stranger. When we are assessing another human being for their fitness to contribute to our company, however, it’s best to not be lead by magic but have an awareness of the meta games that may be going on.
As such there are multiple levels to assess before, during and after every interview:
What is the candidates actual experience, thinking & motivation? (Before)
What is the candidate selling as their experience, thinking & motivation and why? (During)
What else do I need to get out of the candidate to get a full and balanced picture? (During)
What am I liking/disliking about the candidates experience, thinking & motivation? (After)
Why am I liking/disliking it? Am I being biased? (After)
That’s a lot of stuff to tackle which is exactly why having frameworks before going into the interview process helps.
Preparation
Hectic work lives sometimes don’t allow for prep but sacrificing this time for an interview can waste not only your time but also the time of anyone following you in the chain of interviews. This doesn’t even take into consideration the time and resources that are wasted by making wrong decisions. To avoid this you want to go into every interview knowing what you need to understand about a candidate during your time together to have more confidence about your recommendation at the end of the interview.
The things you can assess prior to an interview are what the candidates actual experience has been to prioritise your questions during the interview. It also allows for conjecture as to what skills they have learned, why they maybe pursuing the role with your company and whether there is a culture fit.
The four relevant dimensions we want to assess are:
Role related knowledge
General cognitive ability
Culture and value fit
Motivation
Role related knowledge (RRK) is any hard and soft skill that the candidate has picked up throughout their career that would be relevant for the role you are interviewing for. By understanding the gaps that may exist between your requirement for the role and their existing skill set, you have identified an area for questioning during the interview. Ask yourself:
-For this role am I hiring for specific role related knowledge or for potential?
-Are the skills I’m looking for explicit or implicit on the CV?
-How experienced is this person in the domain that is relevant and have they worked at places that are known for excellence in it?
General cognitive ability (GCA) is the level of intelligence a candidate brings to the table. Intelligence has many dimensions in itself so you need to assess the aspect which is relevant for your role. What can be assessed well through a CV or application is someone’s ability for written communication, structuring thoughts and judgement applied to any questions you may have asked. Ask yourself:
-What’s the signal to noise ratio of this persons descriptions on their CV and or in answers to application questions? Is it a bullshit bingo exercise or substantive?
-Have they worked at places that would require a high level of GCA and test it as a prerequisite to join?
-Have they shown creative thinking and thoughtfulness in any of the application questions they have submitted?
Culture and value fit (CVF) is the collection of beliefs a person has about how organisations should be run and which purpose they should serve. The best way to assess this before the interview is by understanding the cultures and values of the companies’ they have previously worked at. Ask yourself:
-Do the organisations that the candidate has worked at feel similar to mine (i.e. corporate vs. startup)? Do they have the same values, velocity, size, ways of working?
-Does it seem like this person has made opportunistic career decisions or have their decisions been value driven?
Motivation is the underlying drive that has lead to the decisions the candidate has taken in their career and life. Some people may be motivated by external forces others by internal ones. Some have a clear plan about their career development others fall into things. The best approach to assess motivation is to put yourself into the candidates shoes and walk through their CV from their degree to their current role. Ask yourself:
-Do all the career decisions and the career progression make sense to you?
-Why does this candidate want to join your company in that role? Is it a step up or a sideways move?
-Why do they want to leave their current job? Are they stuck at the same level in their current organisation for a while? Are they not challenged?
-Does the person seem like someone who would be excited about the mission of my company? Is there any explicit evidence of that on their CV or in their answers?
*Note that all of the above questions are just a selection of those that you can ask. The list may be different for your organisation and circumstance. Also note that negative answers to the questions above don’t have to mean the candidate is inferior or not a good fit. It’s just a matter of assessing someone based on a two dimensional CV and application which will inherently be plagued by superficiality.
With all these questions asked (which shouldn’t take longer than 10mins) you’ll have a superficial picture of the candidate that you now need to in/validate during the interview. As such you should have a prioritised list of topics you need to hone in on to make up your mind.
…Action!
OK so you have prepared and are going into the interview with a clear understanding of what you want to get out of it. There are a few things that you want to keep top of mind to get the most of the 30-60 mins with the candidate.
Bias is natural and you will have some based on the prep you have done, however, beyond that remind yourself of general biases you may harbour. I am more of an extrovert so sometimes might gravitate more towards those like me rather than someone who is a quiet introvert in an interview. You know best what pre-programming you have and it’s worth reminding yourself of it just before it’s game time.
Depending on how big the seniority gap between you and the candidate is, you may want to break the ice to relieve them of their nerves. An easy way to do this is to ask them about where they grew up. There are roles that will require folks who can operate under pressure, where you may want to do the opposite and start the interview by forcing them to think on their feet. Either way remember that the beginning of the interview is important in setting the tone.
Once the interview has started you need to remind yourself that it’s your fault if you walk out of the room and haven’t gotten to a conclusive judgement as to whether the candidate is a fit or not. It is also your responsibility to give them a fair shot. So ensure you ask all the questions you need to be able to make a decision. It’s better to interrupt someone (respectfully) to guide them in the right direction, rather than politely letting them waffle along about irrelevant topics. As a matter of fact, you’re doing them a favour by managing the conversation to extract the information you need. A good way of doing this without creating awkwardness is by commenting on something they are currently talking about, thereby signalling its seeming relevance, to take over the conversation to then steer it in a different direction.
The key to understanding how someone will act in the actual job setting, is to tap into specific examples of prior behaviour. That’s best achieved with what we call behavioural questioning:
-Tell me about a situation when you had to work under pressure to deliver a project on time.
-Tell me about a time when you coached one of your direct reports who was failing.
Note these are open ended questions as opposed to closed. It’s hard to answer these questions generically and if someone does you need to push them for specific examples. Making up specific examples with enough detail on the fly which end up being believable isn’t easy. That’s why this approach gets us to assess someone’s true RRK and CVF.
Assessing GCA during an interview depends on the role you are hiring for. The usual brain teasers are a decent approach. Personally, what I like to ask is conceptual questions about my business or the sector it’s in. My expectation is not that the person will give the right answer but exploring a space that is new to them competently and eloquently is a good proxy for intelligence. Others consider the airport test as a good gauge - will you get bored hanging out with someone at the airport if your plane is delayed? In other words, are they interesting enough to engage you intellectually more so than the book you’d otherwise read.
Motivation is tricky to assess because of course everyone wants to work for your company as “it’s the BEST”. A good way to get to the truth here, is to ask them about the why of their previous job changes. What was the reason they moved? Were they stuck, did a friend make them aware of a new opportunity, was it opportunistic, random? Obviously, you’ll want to ask them about why they want to join your company too. For the most part people will make up something (and that’s OK) to answer that question, it’s your job to assess how believable the reason is. If it’s obviously a sales pitch, then assess if it’s a good one. Not everyone who joins a company has to be intimately in love with the mission (especially not at later stages). They can fall in love with the company and its achievements after joining. There are of course also people who have devoted their life to a cause or a mission. If that fits with the one your business is committed to then you have found yourself someone who won’t consider their day job work but a passion.
A good thing to do as you are coming to the end of an interview is to give the candidate a sense of your impression of them - truthfully. Obviously, if the interview was a train wreck you probably want to be diplomatic about the outcome. However, especially if you’ve liked someone and have some doubts, you should give them that feedback. Both mention the positive points as well as the areas where there may be some question marks. This gives the candidate an opportunity to address those areas and possibly make your decision easier. This real-time feedback can sometimes lead to awkward situations especially if the candidate then feels like they messed up. You should not do this to make people feel bad but to help them do better next time, so make sure when you provide feedback it’s with the right tone and intent. For the most part, though, if done well, candidates are very thankful for the immediate feedback loop.
Debrief
Nearly there! Now that your impressions are fresh you should take notes about the candidate right away. Jot down your assessment of their GCA, RRK, Culture and value fit as well as motivation. It’s useful to write down what questions you asked, what the answers were and how you felt about them. A colleague might assess the candidate’s answers differently which is a good thing to explore.
Take a moment to critically interrogate your assessment of the candidate. Were you fair in your assessment of the candidate? Was there any bias (their name is the same as your best friend’s) that you need to correct for? There is nothing wrong with getting things wrong “in the heat of the battle” as long as you call yourself out.
Whether you want to brief the next person in line in the interview process depends on a number of factors. Most importantly if you know that the person going next is someone who has their own opinions and can openly disagree with you, you can be more forthcoming with your thoughts on the interview. I generally give an indication of how a candidate fared as well as mention areas where a bit more drilling would be useful to get a more complete picture.
Deciding who gets the job requires a system that allows you to compare candidates with each other without bias. To make candidates truly comparable some companies (especially bigger ones) resort to detailed rating schemes. Ultimately I’ve found comparing candidates relatively to other candidates in the process much more useful. A post interview debrief then goes more like - “…Cathie’s GCA was much higher than Michael’s but he has a higher RRK while Bill’s CVF stands out…”. The candidate that scores highest relatively on most of the dimensions that matter to the role should get. the gig.
Conclusion
Hopefully these relatively straightforward tactics will give you framework to approach the interview process in a more structured fashion to achieve better results.
A very crucial part of every business success comes down to hiring strategy which was only fleetingly addressed as part of this post. I’ll devote another post to this topic.