It's time to get creative with interviews...

I recently wrote about getting creative with job descriptions, but the flip side of the coin is the interview process itself. The often boring, vanilla, snooze fest that doesn't leave you feeling like you truly know the human being behind the corporate mask that showed up.

Given the growing importance of human connection in todays corporate environment it's time to put more effort into this process. It's time to create a more insightful experience for both interviewers and interviewees. And actually it's not as hard as you might think...

• Use a visual aid to talk around. For example the ‘Agile coaching in a nutshell’ poster created by Dandy people can generate a bunch of questions and discussion points. I've asked candidates to pick something they are familiar with on the poster and to tell me about it. You can do the same for areas they are not familiar with, and also ask them to critique elements of it. My experience is that this quickly leads to an informative conversation revealing the candidates knowledge, communication style and levels of curiosity.

• Do a card sorting exercise. At Cancer Research UK the coaching team put together a set of laminated cards with things the team does and doesn’t do, as well as things people think they do but don’t. This was in part to clarify among themselves, but for interviews they use a small subset of the cards and ask candidates to order them in their preference – making it clear there’s no right answer. They encourage questions to clarify what something means or why it’s there if needed. Once sorted in a single line on preference they then ask candidates to move cards left if they feel they would want coaching on them, right if they feel they could coach other coaches or facilitators on them, or leave them in the middle if they are confident to do them themselves. Awesome!
• Ask them to Fill in a canvas. The following canvas from Juggle jobs can be populated by candidates as they see fit, allowing you to simply observe how they use it and react to the exercise. It’s designed for hiring managers to use when creating job specs, but reversing it and having candidates populate it can provide rich insights.

• Fill in a canvas together: option 1 – My user manual from Atlassian. Work through the suggested template to reveal a detailed understanding of what it’s like to work with the candidate and also what they would need from you / the new company for them to thrive. Obviously you can tweak the template to better suit your context as needed.
• Fill in a canvas together: option 2 – I've recently played with Jeff Gothelf’s Lean UX canvas as something to populate myself (as the interviewee) and base my questions and conversation around allowing me to fill it in and gain a deep understanding of the org I may be joining.

• Use metaphors. Can you be playful and ask a question like:

“For you, if a <insert job title here> was a structure, the structure would be like what?”

• Use Clean Language. You may have noticed the clean language question above. Continue with this technique to dig deeper with the metaphor idea.

What kind of <insert some words from the persons response above here>?

Is there anything else about <insert some words from the persons response above here>?

In summary, with a little forethought interviews can be creative, immersive, playful experiences. As an interviewer or an interviewee I encourage you to experiment with different ideas, canvases, games or visuals to bring your interviews to life.

We need to be willing to dig deeper. To really get to know each other before embarking on a serious relationship together. To make our interview process more creative.

What else have you seen or tried? I'd love to know more tips and tricks...

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This post originally appeared on dysfunctionalrequirements.com aimed at helping you survive and succeed in today's corporate jungle.