Be a good interviewer to build a great team

Pandemic changed homes, organizations, schools, shopping, travel, and everything related to communities and interactions. Workplaces closed and everyone adapted to hybrid or remote working setup.

Early in my career (2007-11), I joined Thoughtworks, which cares for people and their growth. This struck a chord with me. I left Thoughtworks and anchored a couple of companies where we tried to replicate the process and culture.

I re-joined Thoughtworks in 2019 and we still care about our people and growth, but it has adapted to the realities of modern challenges. Recruitment plays a vital role in finding the right people and supporting their growth. I wanted to take time and reflect on how it was a decade ago and how we do it today.?

During my first stint at Thoughtworks, I interviewed a lot of candidates. My colleagues talked a lot about interviewing process, candidates, and feedback sessions. Every once in a while, there would be a good healthy debate about an applicant. Panel used to advocate the liked candidates, otherwise articulate reservations. Obviously, this method was taxing on interviewers, recruiters and candidates (because of the wait time) too. Yet, I loved this process for its deliberate nature. Few of these debates used to happen in a stand-up format where all panel members, recruiters and general managers used to huddle. Anyone could drop in the huddle and just listen. I used to join these huddles curiously to understand the thought process, and those sessions were clear to show how many people cared about the culture and growth of the organization.

What was a norm earlier is impossible today:

1. In a remote world, informal debates and discussions about candidates, recruitment processes or interview experiences are non-existent. Zoom officially killed informal channels of communication.?
2. Recruitment huddles are now virtual, and no new members can drop into the conversation to observe the discussion.?
3. Our interview processes are much shorter now. Although this has nothing to do with remote work, nowadays interview processes are a couple of weeks or shorter.?
4. The remote nature of deliberations makes it impossible to observe and learn non-verbal cues from panelists.?

We are amidst a massive talent war. There are unprecedented open positions and candidates have plenty of options. A decade ago, people used to build a connection with the company before appearing for an interview. They wanted it! Today, every company is just another opportunity. Only a fraction of candidates join a company because of its?philosophy, culture, or business.?

I am disappointed that many people are treating interviews as means to get an offer. There are many candidates in the market who appear for interviews to test their abilities or just to get one more offer letter for negotiation with the competition. Irrespective of the purpose, I always put up the best effort as an interviewer. This is the first time a candidate is experiencing Thoughtworks and this experience will stay with them for their life. I would love if they took away a positive experience.?

I care about interviews; people are giving their precious time and mind share. I want to make the best use of their time and understand more about them.

To build a great team, every leader must be a good interviewer first. Unfortunately, we do not treat interviewing as a crucial skill. Many companies train their employees with do's and don'ts for the interviewing. We rely on people to learn interview skills based on their technical skills, experience, or job position. In my mind, interviewing is one of the most crucial skills for leadership. I made a lot of mistakes to learn and paired with a lot of good interviewers.?

This article is an attempt to give you my view of this skill. This may sound preachy, but it is easy?to find relevant experience from your past interviews and correlate. If you are new to interviewing, this article will surely help.?

I focus on three key areas to focus for better interviews - the prep, the interview and closing the loop.

1. The Prep

This is the most neglected part of the interviewing process. Today's remote working culture where we keep hopping from one meeting to another, people often skip on the preparation part. We can further break the preparation down into three areas of orienting, learning and pre-reading.

Orienting yourself

Your company has a mission, a set of values, and philosophy. This is easily accessible information from the company website or talk?to recruiters. One of my colleagues believed this is a marketing gimmick and these are empty words on a paper. I feel sorry for them because they couldn't experience the values during their stay in the company. This is a failure at the organization level, and everyone should strive to transfer organizational principles to their customers and colleagues. If you do not connect with your company in principle, you might as well leave the company.

My company has the following mission -?

To create an extraordinary impact on the world through our culture and technology excellence.

Familiarizing with this helps you think deeply about cultural and organizational alignment of candidates.?

If you are a founder of a company, it is worth spending a day or two coming up with the mission, a set of values and philosophy for your company other than "We want to build great product(s) to change the world!".?

Learning about interview skill

I am an engineer and most of us never learn psychology to understand humans at a deeper level. We leave it completely to chance for an individual to learn this skill on their own. The expectation is not to earn a master's in psychology to be a good interviewer, but learning a few principles of how to create a safe environment and welcome a free exchange of information. At the least, you should be able to make the candidate very comfortable to show the best version of themselves.

Learn to deal with your prejudices and biases. We can't control what thoughts come to our mind, but we can definitely control how we act on them. We can debate ourselves to neutralize any biases by re-affirming our beliefs.?

Often our biases are deeply rooted within our thoughts and need a strong counter-balancing voice in your head. To strengthen that counter-balancing voice, you can learn more about gender, race, financial parity (or lack thereof). Familiarizing yourself with social issues and trying to imagine what others go through will allow you to develop your own thoughts, which can challenge your own biases. This is difficult, but every attempt counts! I am no expert, but this article can be a good start.?

Role and expectations

Read up about the job posting, role expectations and the experience requirement. 80% of the developer responsibilities are common across profiles but, the 20% differences are the key factors to focus. Data engineer and full stack developer might have a lot of overlap in terms of capabilities and practices yet, both require a different lens of interview, discussion areas and expectations on outcomes. Walking into interviews with a very clear understanding of job profile improves quality of interaction and allows you to evaluate candidates better.

Study the resume

Have you just glanced at the resume before starting an interview? I know I am guilty of this on a couple of occasions. Either a day before or a couple of hours before the interview, block time on the calendar (usually 10-15 mins are enough) to go through the resume and highlight key talking points. Few points to consider:

1. Employment history - Note the past few companies and employment durations. If there are any gaps, highlight them. If people did freelancing or consulting, talk about the motivation, kind of work and what made them switch back. These questions allow me to evaluate the mindset of the person.?
2. Skills, certifications and education - Look for certifications relevant to the job, bring it up in the conversation and validate the knowledge.?
3. Relevant projects - Find relevant project experience and highlight key aspects of the project from the resume. Ask the candidate to explain the project, their role and their challenges.?

2. The Interview

If you have done the preparation well, it is interview time. I am always excited to meet the candidate and have a healthy dialogue with them. Let us quickly go over the key things to remember during the interview process.?

Be humane and humble

Be humane. Spend a couple of minutes at the beginning of the interview to assess if the candidate is comfortable, are well and ready for the interview. When you meet a candidate in the office, this is less of a concern as you can sense from the body language. If you sense a candidate is not well, having any connectivity issues or any other reason might prevent them from being 100% for interview, ask if they want to reschedule. Assure them this reschedule will not affect their candidature or outcome of the process.?

Be humble during the interview.?

Interviews are a bi-directional process. A company and candidate both are being assessed simultaneously.?

As an interviewer, you are representing the company and culture.?

In this world of constantly hopping meetings, as an interviewer, it is necessary to control the conversation but do not exert overpowering authority. The role of the interviewer is like a facilitator. As a good facilitator, you can control the conversation, bring the best version of the candidate and use the time optimally.

Use the full time

A few times, in the first 20 minutes of an interview, it becomes apparent the candidate will not make it. Earlier, I used to close the interview by finding a logical endpoint and formally thank the candidate and close the call.?

Later, I started spending full time with the candidates asking about their experience, sort of going off the script for the interview. This allowed me to understand better about their experience and on two occasions, I could advise them to apply for different roles in my company. Try this out: the only thing you have to lose is the remaining 40 minutes of the discussion.?

Closing of the interview

Ensure you allow candidates to ask questions. If they do not ask questions, ask them if they read about the company?

Let candidates know clearly about the next steps.?

Do not rush out of the interview with an excuse for the next meeting. I prefer at least an hour of gap between interview slots and my customer meetings. This allows me to run over a little without rescheduling my customer meeting.?

Handling oddballs

If you meet an arrogant candidate, stay calm. If it makes you uncomfortable, gracefully close the call and let the recruiter handle the next steps. It happened to me only once, but worth keeping this at the back of your mind.?

3. Closing the loop

I ensure I do a few things after every interview.?

Feedback to recruiters

I prefer to talk to recruiters rather than passing my notes and recommendations. If I liked the candidate, discussion focuses on strengths of the candidate and how we can onboard them effectively. A few candidates could benefit from a certain training before joining a project, a few might be a good fit on certain type projects. If you don’t have such visibility, still provide your recommendation. Recruiters are great at capturing this feedback and taking next steps. In case the candidate didn’t get through, have a detailed conversation about reasons.?

Telling exactly what didn’t work with the candidate allows them to scrutinize candidates better.?

Rub off effect

At Thoughtworks, we do interviews in pairs. Talk to your pair about the interview, ask for feedback. Working closely with your peers allows you to sharpen your skills. Your interview strengths are rubbing off on the people, too. Collectively, your team gets stronger.

Once a candidate joins the company, I seek their thoughts on interview process. It may surprise you about what they have to say about you and the overall process.?

—

In closing thoughts, always recruit interesting people who are fun to work with. This process doesn’t guarantee success, but will ensure you make fewer mistakes.?