How to judge a person’s work ethics during an interview process?
I consider work ethics as one of the top evaluation criteria for selecting my team members. But what is work ethics in the first place? In a simple way, it’s a set of positive work habits that are built over time as an involuntary response to professional situations. These are easy to spot, difficult to fake, and are invaluable to decide whether someone will be a good fit.
You may ask, what’s the difference between ‘life ethics’ and ‘work ethics’? Well, it’s similar to the difference in the behavior of an animal in its jungle vs in a zoo. Corporate life is a zoo and it’s not easy to transfer all life ethics. Moreover, a zoo needs its own set of ethics to co-exist with animals that you may not like or used to.
Here are a few tips I use to find good work ethics in a person:
1. Gives credit to others: This one is not easy to fake. It needs to be cultivated as a habit for many, many years, against the headwind of the typical corporate culture of insecurity. People who give due credit to others are pure gold. Please watch out in an interview, when asked to narrate a success story from their past, whether they give credit to others involved without being prompted.
2. Bias for action: In the last ten minutes or so you give to the candidate for asking questions, don't look for cleverness or knowledge about your company. Look for a bias for action. "What should I solve as my immediate problem if I join you?" "How can I help you to beat your competitor in this space?" type of questions and conversations following it. Look for the tone, tenor, and body language as well. Conspicuous passion for action will always ooze out.
3. Sense of humor: Of course a non-flippant or inoffensive type. A good sense of humor is fairly reflective of a person’s ability to let go. Letting go is a cultivated habit of strong and confident people and is a great diffusive response to bad situations. People create more damage to the organization by not letting go at the right time. A person with an inclusive sense of humor is an asset to any team.
4. Flexibility: People with great work ethics know the rule no 1 of smooth travel in the corporate lane of chaotic traffic: Give way to get way. Flexibility doesn’t at all mean compromising on goals, rather (counter-intuitively) it’s a lot about being efficient. In a process of selection, there will be a number of moments (Salary negotiations or discussions on job responsibilities etc.) when this quality will come out and flexible people make the rules clear upfront and are always ready to work it out for a win-win. Or pull back without burning the bridges.
Of course, there are a number of hygiene factors like punctuality, promptness, meeting commitments and so on that are very important too on your scorecard, which I am sure you are already covering. I wanted to list out things that I discovered while personally involving myself in more than 8000 hiring decisions during my career so far and analyzed the best and worst of them in retrospect.
Principal Cloud Architect - AI, ML and High Performance Computing (HPC) at Oracle
3 年Very nicely written indeed...!!! Sharing with my daughter who will be graduating in few weeks with a degree in Architectural design and currently navigating interviews. Thanks..!!!
Senior Manager, MySQL Product Support
3 年Dear Renga, The quality of "giving credit to others" comes when there is sense of security from within; when there is confidence in the self (yes; this comes with years of actual experience and not just by knowing or reading books) Creating a win-win situation at work (and also in life!) is the only way leading to success, because inclusiveness is the way of growth. Letting go is so important - it checks our ego and how willing are we to accept the present moment and move on. I personally liked how you associated 'Humor' with 'Letting go' - it is actually true if we contemplate. When an individual is connected with their inner self, all these positive and important qualities emerge out of one's personality automatically.? And as you rightly said, it shows up very clearly if it is one's true nature or if someone is faking it. I am reminded of the "Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs" - a good self-analysis tool to be cognizant of our growth, that shows up our true nature towards self and others. A very good read - although we tend to know these points at the back of our minds, this was a conscious read to remind ourselves. Thank you for sharing! ?? ??
SaaS Product - IT Services - Sales Leadership | Coaching for High-Performance
3 年Hi Renga - Nice precise summary of your criteria for selection. Regarding Giving Credit, most of the interviewers are super focussed on what the candidate has achieved as an individual and hence don’t bother about any statements that start with “We”. Hence most of the candidates spruce up things and showcase successes as what they accomplished even if it was done by one of their team members. I think it goes back to Company Culture on what the Company truly values. I personally would look at at least one more criteria - Decision making and processing failures.
Infrastructure Sevices Head, ITC Infotech
3 年Very True Ranga. Totally agree with the pointers and litmus parameters led out. It is all the more important because in that one meeting for 45 mins to an hour, it is almost impossible to judge a person. Out in the world, more often, we misjudge or find out attributes of a person even after many years of being acquainted.
Sr. Director - North America - Cloud Infra & Security (Retail & Consumer) | SRE | FinOps | DevOps | 3X Azure | AWS |GCPCDL | SaFe Agilist | PSM/PAL Scrum | UT Austin
3 年Great reading, Boss. Proud to be a handpick of yours - i.e one out of 8000. Didn’t predict sense of humor in the list but it makes lot of sense. Enjoyed reading. Btw, for some reason I recalled “Thillu Mullu” interview scene when I read sense of humor in the hiring topic - “7465/100 Mark ??”