How do you interview?

Hello, LinkedIn colleagues!

I would like to get your inputs and feedback on interviewing – namely, how do you find good candidates to build a high-performing team?

Background

To me, interviewing is the most important aspect of my job as a manager and leader. I need to find the right mix of people who have good skills and work well with each other. A good team can prevent issues and manage customer expectations to enable me to drive strategic business value.

Over the years, I have had the honor of interviewing my fair share of people for many different positions. My task was to determine if a candidate is a good team fit within 30-60 minutes. Wow, tough task. After all, I typically spend days determining if a pair of shoes are a good fit. To increase the effectiveness of the interview process, I learned to orchestrate the interview with a team of people who can collectively gauge the candidate’s qualifications. For example, each interviewer or interviewing team focuses on different aspects of a candidate’s qualifications. A fringe benefit of practicing this process is better alignment of the team’s expectations on the the good and bad characteristics of candidates, and reinforces the cultural norms within the team.

I have simplified my technique to look for two key dimensions when interviewing someone: Aptitude and Attitude. Aptitude – Does the person have the requisite functional skills to perform the job well? This is the classical dimension where we all have explored myriad questions to vet candidates. Attitude – Will the person fit well from cultural and soft skills perspectives? This dimension is more difficult and involves reading people well, making assessments on incomplete information and leveraging instinct to make a decision. How do I know if the person is a good fit, or does the person just interview really well? A good interviewing methodology is needed.

What questions to ask?

Some interviewers prefer the STAR (Situation/Task, Action, Result) method where questions gauge the candidate’s future performance based on past experiences. I see value with the STAR method and use it often as a triangulation technique to verify that the candidate truly knows the subject matter and didn’t just read online articles prior to the interview. In my experience, the STAR method, by itself, is not enough to determine the potential fit of a candidate. Often, I need to find good problem solvers. The STAR method involves a lot of retrospective time and less time on problem solving. To use a metaphor, the STAR method helps me find the skilled position player who knows how to perform a task well, but it doesn’t help me as much to find a good athlete who can adapt and solve problems that have not yet been solved before.

I supplement the STAR method with “What if” questions to find the good athletes. Often, I pose real-world challenges (simplified and sanitized for interview questions) to the candidate to solve. I listen and evaluate the candidate’s thought process and approach. The extra benefit for me is to get additional perspectives to help me solve my real-world problems. As the candidate explains the approach, I ask follow-up questions to probe into collaboration and soft skills.

Another technique that I learned is to ask the candidate to present a topic. I have seen some candidates who interview really well in a 1:1 setting, but struggle in a presentation format. The skills to convey a topic to an audience and to field questions are needed for managers and technical leaders, yet these skills are often not as refined in many candidates, especially technical people.

Other Thoughts

I approach the interview process as a mutual interview. I respect the interviewee’s time, and know that good candidates will likely get multiple offers. I reserve time to get to know the candidate as a person, and also to describe the company and team culture. Some candidates are really good and I go into a sales-pitch mode once I determine a good fit. Again, good candidates don’t stay available for very long.

As a hiring manager, I often rely on recruiters to help me find good people. Recruiters spend a lot of time sourcing candidates, and I want to respect their efforts by providing timely and insightful feedback. In order to get better candidates, I need to provide actionable feedback to recruiters. “This candidate didn’t meet my needs” is not actionable. “I like the candidate’s technical skills, but the ability to explain complex topics to an executive audience was lacking” is more actionable.

I also provide some real-time feedback to the interviewees on their questions and answers. The interviewees appreciate the feedback I give, since some of them never get any meaningful feedback after their interviews. No matter how polite the “after careful consideration, we have decided to pursue other candidates” canned email response is phrased, there is no useful feedback to help the interviewee improve. My perspective is that the candidate invested time to come to the interview so I should invest some time to provide feedback. Of course, I gauge what feedback is appropriate. Some HR folks may get uncomfortable with this approach so I assure them that I don’t provide any inappropriate feedback.

Why is interviewing so important?

Having a well-functioning team provides the basis for company success. Good people who work well with each other are difficult to find. Good people will know how to strengthen teamwork. They will foster innovation. They boost morale. They establish trust that is foundational for a good culture. The interview process is the critical gateway to find good people. On the contrary, some people have great functional skills, but may provide a toxic ingredient to the culture. An interview process may not be 100% bulletproof so other processes must be incorporated to manage out people who are toxic to the culture.

Regarding innovation, virtually all companies state innovation as a core value or critical aspect of the culture. Some companies promote activities that stimulate innovation such as Hack Day, Hackathon, Patent Day and so on. These events are truly useful, and I have sponsored and participated in these events to differing degrees of success. To take innovation to the next level, I believe that a culture that fosters innovation involves people innovating each and every day. People focus on doing the right thing and not only about doing it the right way. Cultural elements such as trust and empowerment promote educated risk taking, which drives innovation. Namely, people who are not afraid to try new things. This behavior is one of many benefits from a high-performing team.

Thank you for reading. Please share your thoughts on how you interview and what techniques work well for you.

Cheers.