Comments on: Interviewing — How to conduct an interview

By: ruben

ruben — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:32:33 +0000

Agreed. The point about challenging the candidate is only one facet of the interview, but it should be relevant to what they can expect to be doing is really important. I may change that point to be “Challenge the Candidate” as “Induce Stress” is not the correct message.

By: Jon Phillips

Jon Phillips — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:46:50 +0000

I really enjoy your posts, Ruben, and find that I learn from and agree with most of the things you write. On the topic of inducing stress, I would caution that the interview is also the candidate’s best chance to form an opinion of his potential future co-workers and the company. Taken too far, inducing stress for the sake of sport will cause the candidate to form a negative opinion not only of that particular interviewer, but also of the company. And if you’ve got a superstar on your hands, it would be unfortunate to lose that candidate because of one bad interview/interviewer.

Also, make sure the stress induction is directly relevant to the job you expect the candidate to perform. Don’t ask a product manager technical things like how to write an algorithm that checks to see if an arbitrary array is a sequence or not. Similarly, don’t ask a software engineer how they would take initiative to drive top line revenue for some fancy widget.

I recall being on the receiving end of a “stress inducing” interview that was not at all appropriate for the position I was interviewing for. My perceptions of that individual and that company were colored by that. When I received the offer, I said no and told them why. The response I got was, “Yeah, we know we shouldn’t let that guy interview and he wasn’t inclined to hire you so that’s how we knew we should definitely make the offer.” Gee, great. Good luck with that approach.

Keep up the great, informative posts!

By: ruben

ruben — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:37:50 +0000

I agree that intuition is an important factor and I will address that in a future post. The purpose of this post is to discuss the form of the interview. “How you should conduct an interview.” I will highlight questions to ask and “what” to look for in a future post.

That said you remind me that, some of the best people we have hired have been those that had lots of “energy” around their debrief. Candidates that have many people who indicated the candidate was a strong hire and some that indicated the candidate was a no-hire. The most disappointing have been where every body was inclined, but nobody really would champion the candidate or found the superlative in anything they did, but couldn’t find a reason not to hire them.

By: Thomas Hudson

Thomas Hudson — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 03:45:34 +0000

This is great advice. Unfortunately it is worthless, because it still ignores intuition. Some times you need to make a leap of faith about a candidate. Often, “exactly what we want” is bad for a company. Perhaps sometimes we reject the candidate that would challenge our company and make us better.

When I evaluate people, I look for disruptive. The guys I like are almost always the most disappointing.

By: heyjudeseattle

heyjudeseattle — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:53:28 +0000

Great post!

On #4, I totally agree with your point about stress. We all operate under it, so you should know that a candidate is not going to roll into a ball at the first hint of trouble. In a review loop, there should be at least one person who can turn up the heat.

However, some organizations take the induction of stress as the *point* of the interview. (Admiral Rickover famously interviewed people with their chair bolted to the floor, an easy way to induce stress.) Many people are not at their best under stress.

I like to balance stress with understanding what someone is like when they’re talking about something they’re really passionate about. It’s just as important to know how people operate when they’re really comfortable…after all, ideally that’s how they’ll be working for you!