How to conduct kick @$$ interviews ... and avoid a peepee-storm

Inspired by the fact that we @ Junglee Games pride ourselves for our fairly strong interview process to help us both, a) find the right team members and b) ensure the interview is a great experience for all candidates. 

First, let me start with ‘Why you should become a great interviewer?’

Not many people realize but every person who interacts with you and your company, forms an opinion and becomes a potential ambassador of how great or crap you are. So you want to make sure you always leave a positive impression on everyone and even if you don’t hire them, they will still refer your company and open roles to their friends. Your Company, your brand, needs fans, this is a great way to make some.

Second, most interviews are ineffective, mainly because they don’t have a conversation with the candidates and treat the whole process like a ‘mechanical checklist’. The points below are all about conducting great interviews.

Adopt these points and you’ll have optimized your interviews to be impactful, filter the right candidates, leave a strong impression on everyone you interview,

and most importantly...avoid interviews like this ...

1. Prepare yourself and your questions

Study the candidate’s profile, before you meet them, you should generally know who they are, what kind of experience they have and if you’re following up after someone else’s interview then what is the basic feedback the candidate has gotten from previous rounds.

Review the Role’s template - your Talent Acquisition team should give you one that will have some basic info such as the expectations the Hiring Manager has from the role, questions, list of required attributes in the ideal candidate. Your top performers are a great guideline for the attributes you desire and questions you'd want to ask. You'd ideally want to craft the questions and attribute requirements around what helped you discover and bring on board your top performers. 

Try to hold structured interviews that ask both behavioral and situational questions.

Behavioral interviews ask candidates to describe prior achievements and match those to what is required in the current job (i.e., “Tell me about a time . . . ?”).

Situational interviews present a job-related hypothetical situation (i.e., “What would you do if . . . ?”). A diligent interviewer will probe deeply into each answer.

Sample questions via https://www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-google/ 

• Tell me about a time your behavior had a positive impact on your team. (Follow-ups: What was your primary goal and why? How did your teammates respond? Moving forward, what’s your plan?)
• Tell me about a time when you effectively managed your team to achieve a goal. What did your approach look like? (Follow-ups: What were your targets and how did you meet them as an individual and as a team? How did you adapt your leadership approach to different individuals? What was the key takeaway from this specific situation?)
• Tell me about a time you had difficulty working with someone (can be a coworker, classmate, client). What made this person difficult to work with for you? (Follow-ups: What steps did you take to resolve the problem? What was the outcome? What could you have done differently?)
• How would you influence cross functional teams, without exercising authority, to accomplish a common goal, eg: getting xyz prioritized over a team's daily commitments? 

and more here https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/google-s-hr-boss-use-these-interview-questions.html 

You should focus on how the candidate would solve real challenges related to the position. If you’re hiring a driver, you have them drive you around first. 

So present the candidate with a real business problem, something they'd actually work on if they were part of the team and ask them to describe the solution. Share relevant process the team follows , and ask the candidate to provide feedback on any inefficiencies. 

2. Kill the stress! 

When people are stressed they do not perform as well. We need to show empathy to all candidates, as they are those that may get too nervous and even worse, mentally shutdown under pressure. We've all been there.

To begin with, your first few questions should get to know the candidate personally and warm up to them. Example: I almost always start with ‘how did you get here, cab, metro?’ , whatever the candidate answers I pick up on that and we chat about it for a quick min, if the candidate says “metro”, I give a funny story about how I missed my metro stop once cause my metro box was full and I couldn’t get out, if the candidate says “car or cab” I speak about how I can’t drive in India and in OLA/Uber I trust. 

This is just an example, you can ask any number of questions to warm up, here are a few more:

• Do you live far from your current office location?
• I see you’re a Cricket fan … so <speak about some current Cricket topic>
• I see you’ve listed xyz in your personal interest / hobbies, so <insert something supportive or recent fact / news that can be discussed about>
• I see you went to xyz College … well <insert something you know about the place or some point of discussion>
• So why are you looking for a change? (whatever reason they give, you show an understanding so they believe you support their decision example: I understand the management hasn’t been fair to you, makes sense why you’d look for a new role).

After a few laughs and more importantly getting to know the candidate, you can come back to role focused questions.

During the interview, see candidates stumbling for answers or showing signs of clear stress (frowning, fidgeting), be empathetic and tell them to relax. Maybe ask them if they need some Water and give them more time to think through the answers to the questions. 

One easy trick to help the candidate is to mention the question topics you’re about to ask, but first explain the role, this way they can subconsciously prepare for the upcoming questions while you’re speaking about the role.  

Smile, lean back, un-fold your arms and steady your breathing, all these are body language for ‘friendly and safe environment’ and brings the candidate back to a clear thinking mind. 

Your goal is to “make them comfortable” so that you have a productive, professional conversation.

3. Take notes in real time & NO Distractions 

Take notes as the interview progresses directly into a text editor or the tool you use for collecting feedback (we use Recruiterbox)

Don’t save this for last. You'll never remember all your feedback later.

Three advantages:

1. You can copy paste into Email or the tool you use (hi5 Recruiterbox) right away with no extra time spent after the interview ends, and you won’t forget anything.
2. Your colleague, who may be following up with the next round immediately, will have immediate feedback to review.
3. Great impression on the Candidate who will notice you paying attention (and you will) to everything they say.

No distractions! Close chat, phone, email and give the candidate full attention. I've seen people looking down on phones or checking emails while others interview. If it’s an emergency, excuse yourself, else show the candidate you’re interested in them, by giving them the respect and attention they deserve while they’re speaking.

4. Take your time with the right ones, and exit the bad ones

If the interview is going well, take your time to continue to chat with the candidate. The more time you spend with a person the more you learn about them. It is well worth it to spend an extra hour with a potential hire, than to hire a mis fit and deal with hours of challenges later.

Whenever you realize the candidate is not right for the position, kill the interview. There is no value in spending time with someone we won’t hire and to waste their time as well.  Its best to be honest and set the tone right always.

You can exit one of two ways -

1. Thank the candidate for their time and let them know you’ll have our Talent Acquisition team get back to them. Notify the TA team that there's no fit right away and let them handle declining the candidate. 
2. Thank the candidate for their time and if you can manage it, give them feedback in real time (I do) so they’re not left hanging. Tell them it’s better for their own growth and best they hear the feedback now rather than wait for later. If the candidate didn’t do anything wrong and just isn’t a fit the way we need you simply say “Rahul, thank you for your interest in our Junglee Rummy team and for going through our interview process. Your candidacy, though strong, isn't a fit for our requirements at the moment.”

You'd be surprised about how many candidates will thank you for the honest and quick feedback. They'd even mention that they themselves weren't sure about the role or they were expecting such a response and appreciate that it came direct.

5. Above all else, Adaptable people are the best

Look for Candidates that adapt to situations and are willing to adjust to get the job done. These people are the best and will create the least amount of issues as they’re more inclined to do what it takes achieve their goals and not get into dramatic engagements or stall in the face of any challenge that takes them out of their comfort zone. The questions you ask will help you filter people from those that 'attract conflict' versus those who 'adapt to the situation' and get past challenges. Highly recommend psychometric tests and situational questions here .. I won't share ours, you'd have to interview with us to find out ;)  

6. End on a positive and passionate note

Before closing the interview, you must give the candidate the opportunity to ask you any questions they may have. If they’ve been asking during the interview, which means its more of a discussion between the two of you that’s great! If not, give them the opportunity to ask you questions. If they have none, depending on how the interview went you may offer to give a little info on us so they don’t walk away knowing nothing.

For all standard questions, have a Company template with all common Qs&As (how big, where are offices, how big is eng team vs mktg, profitable, and most important product and long term business vision). This way, all candidates get the same answer and your company’s interviewers give the vibe of being well informed and unified.

The candidate may not remember what you said but they will remember how you made them feel.    Even if the interview is not going well, you should always end on a positive note, a smile and if asked about the Company or any additional questions about the role, speak passionately.  These candidates go out and speak to their friends, they share interview experiences and you do not want to end up giving a failed candidate the wrong impression that we do not care about ‘all’ candidates, as he/she will spread the word.

If the meeting is going well and you believe that the candidate is worth wooing, spend time during the second half of the interview speaking passionately about the role and organization. Time permitting, maybe even ask them if there’s anyone on the team they’d like to meet or have some more team members meet them. I also take them through a product tour of one of our games like Junglee Rummy , there's no better way to build appreciation for your products than to let them experience it as user itself. 

And yes, we're hiring https://jungleegames.recruiterbox.com/