I’ve been doing a bunch of interviewing lately, and, given plans for 2010 in Singapore, I certainly will continue to do more in the next couple of quarters. An since recruiting mistakes are incredibly painful, I have been thinking about interview questions.
I'm usually second or third in the process, so by the time a candidate has reached me they have already had full sessions with other folks. As such, I am pretty confident that the candidates I see have the core skills mastery necessary to do the job (decided in CV screen and previous interviews). So what I am looking to understand is not 'skills,' but to get a sense for who the person is, and how well they will fit into their environment.
So here are some of the questions I have been asking recently to gauge....I'd love to hear what yours are.....
I like to open with this question as, on the surface, it feels ‘playful’ to most candidates and answering it allows them to relax a bit and get comfortable in their skins. After all, they have already covered this ground in a previous interview, and they can even improve on the answer they gave last time, so this should be a non-threatening question.
However, the answers usually tell me a lot about the candidate. Immediately the answers will give me a sense for what the candidate finds exciting and interesting. Do they hone in on a technical question? Do they focus on a personal topic? Do they recount something about the interview where they actually learned something about themselves? How do they interpret the question and answer and the previous interviewer.
In addition, the question allows me to get a sense for how the candidate deals with a politically sensitive situation, since the answer is basically feedback on the quality of the previous interviewer.
And of course, it allows me to get insight into the previous interviewers themselves.
Here I want to know how serious the candidate is about the job and how well they have listened (to print JD, recruiter, and previous interviewers). Their answer will also tell me a lot about what they have done in the past as the answer will be framed in terms of their perception of the domain they are interviewing around and what they know from previous jobs.
Finally, I am looking to see how they ‘describe’. Are they methodical? How do they organize their description? Do they use Taxonomy or SOP? Do they think in bullet points and plan their answer? Do they focus on people, process, or skills? Can they get to the point? Do they have any insight on process improvement?!?
This is actually similar in some ways to the previous question. I want to know that the candidate has really thought about themselves in the role. If they can identify my top 3 it is a good sign that they ‘get it’.
I also am hoping that they do not focus at the micro level but that they address the big picture critical success factors.
Anyway, a good candidate can use this question to really market themselves and drive the messages that they had intended to drive. If they don’t take the opportunity to do it here, it says something.
The question is straightforward. I really do want to know if they can negotiate positively and creatively and that they understand why that is important. However, the key here is detail. I want them to hone in on a very specific situation from their real lives.
Again, I want detail here. I want to know a couple of things.
First, I want to know that they are not afraid to make, and admit to, mistakes. If people are not making mistakes, then I know that they are not driving themselves to improve – because the only time you make mistakes is when you are stretching yourself. If people make errors but do not admit to them (or they give me a situation that is framed as their mistake but ist is clear that they really think it was someone else’s mistake), then they are either insincere or self deluded.
Second, I want to know that they also have learned from the mistakes.
The way a person describes tells me lots about how they perceive, and thus understand, their world. This is probably the best question for me to understand their Meyers-Briggs type.
Again, are they methodical in their description – do they start from far from me and work in or do they pan left to right? Are they abstract or sensual or emotional in their focus? Do they focus on visual or other senses? Are they Spartan, chaotic, geeky? Do they find the question itself absurd or inspirational?
OK, on the surface this appears to be a skills question (this particular one is for Business Manager candidates), but what I am really looking for in the answer is how the candidate is able to empathize with someone else and modify their communications styles to meet the other person's perspectives and backgrounds.
My hope is that instead of plunging in and defining properties and methods, they ask me why?
This is an extremely poor requirement as a question. You could have an infinite number of object models after all. Which one you choose should be specific to the problem being solved. A zoo keeper’s medical database will be very different from slaughter house ERP system or a supermarket checkout counter system. All of these will have different methods, properties, and inheritance relationships.
So, if they don’t ask me to clarify the requirements, this speaks to how they will interact with their future customers. Of course, I also want to know how they go about designing objects, what decisions they will make, and why.