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For me, this kind of assessment is based on a number of factors: 1. Personality and language skills - are they sufficiently outgoing and conversant to be able

For me, this kind of assessment is based on a number of factors: 1. Personality and language skills - are they sufficiently outgoing and conversant to be able to interface well with others? Introversion is common in our profession but in order to work on a team you've got to be able to talk to people in person. Panel interviews are good for this; anyone who can keep up decently, seems personable, not stressed by the situation, and manages to leave an imprint is likely a good candidate by this measure. 2. Written communication skills - while arranging the interview, you're going to be emailing back and forth a few times. Ask some questions and see how they respond. 3. Asking about previous teams and their views on team composition, dynamics, and work distribution; handling large workloads, dealing with absence due to vacation/sickness/etc. This is a good kind of question because unlike asking about what their previous teams _did_, which someone can embellish, asking about the actual process of dealing with different scenarios shows their own understanding. Present a few scenarios and ask the candidate what they think a team lead / manager should do in that situation. It's going to be hard to get a quantitative metric for this, you have to rely on your intuition.

koopuluri 9y ago
> ...anyone who can keep up decently, seems personable, not stressed by the situation, and manages to leave an imprint is likely a good candidate by this measure. I'm not sure high stress environment test is a good measure. I've worked with some amazing teammates before that might have been nervous if in such a situation. >Present a few scenarios and ask the candidate what they think a team lead / manager should do in that situation. I like this approach. Regarding the question examples you gave, do you look mostly for how they reason through those situations, and their ability to put themselves in their teammates' / managers' shoes, or do you also have a spectrum of [right --> wrong] answers for those questions.
- core-questions 9y ago
  > I'm not sure high stress environment test is a good measure. Talking with a few of your future coworkers in a room where nothing is on fire shouldn't be "high stress" - interviews are always a bit of a stress inducing thing, but ultimately if you're hiring someone who may have to deal with tough situations from time to time on a team, this sort of situation should be easy enough for them to handle. If they're not in so much of an ops role and won't be dealing with things that are on fire, you can always reduce this stress by starting 1 on 1, and then adding people as the interview goes along in order to give them a more comfortable base. > Regarding the question examples you gave, do you look mostly for how they reason through those situations, and their ability to put themselves in their teammates' / managers' shoes, or do you also have a spectrum of [right --> wrong] answers for those questions. For me, it's more of a matter of determining whether they've just worked on a team as a member, or if they've actually thought about the dynamics of teams and have their own opinions and ideas about what makes for a high performance team vs. a dysfunctional one. Getting a feeling for what sorts of business processes they like, how they like to communicate, what level of tracking artifacts they require/feel comfortable with, how they think work should be broken down, etc. is a good way to understand if they're going to be someone who works well with the way your team is already composed, and if they're going to be someone who is going to help evolve the team in a better direction. If they say something that makes you bristle, pay attention to your intuition. If you think, "gee, person X on my team isn't going to like that", consider it, because you want person X to be happy and productive and introducing a new team member who is going to potentially have conflict with them may not be worth it. Every aspect of your evaluation forms a heuristic in your mind that you can use to decide if they're the right blend of worker for your particular team. I really like trusting a lot of this sort of thing to my hindbrain. There's a lot of magic happening back there that combines things in a big-data sort of way that we don't consciously understand, but when it comes to interactions with other humans, we evolved to be good at this kind of judgement - since it's life or death, in the state of nature - and we should trust our instincts, provided we've tuned them to not be irrationally prejudiced.

koopuluri 9y ago

> ...anyone who can keep up decently, seems personable, not stressed by the situation, and manages to leave an imprint is likely a good candidate by this measure. I'm not sure high stress environment test is a good measure. I've worked with some amazing teammates before that might have been nervous if in such a situation. >Present a few scenarios and ask the candidate what they think a team lead / manager should do in that situation. I like this approach. Regarding the question examples you gave, do you look mostly for how they reason through those situations, and their ability to put themselves in their teammates' / managers' shoes, or do you also have a spectrum of [right --> wrong] answers for those questions.

core-questions 9y ago
> I'm not sure high stress environment test is a good measure. Talking with a few of your future coworkers in a room where nothing is on fire shouldn't be "high stress" - interviews are always a bit of a stress inducing thing, but ultimately if you're hiring someone who may have to deal with tough situations from time to time on a team, this sort of situation should be easy enough for them to handle. If they're not in so much of an ops role and won't be dealing with things that are on fire, you can always reduce this stress by starting 1 on 1, and then adding people as the interview goes along in order to give them a more comfortable base. > Regarding the question examples you gave, do you look mostly for how they reason through those situations, and their ability to put themselves in their teammates' / managers' shoes, or do you also have a spectrum of [right --> wrong] answers for those questions. For me, it's more of a matter of determining whether they've just worked on a team as a member, or if they've actually thought about the dynamics of teams and have their own opinions and ideas about what makes for a high performance team vs. a dysfunctional one. Getting a feeling for what sorts of business processes they like, how they like to communicate, what level of tracking artifacts they require/feel comfortable with, how they think work should be broken down, etc. is a good way to understand if they're going to be someone who works well with the way your team is already composed, and if they're going to be someone who is going to help evolve the team in a better direction. If they say something that makes you bristle, pay attention to your intuition. If you think, "gee, person X on my team isn't going to like that", consider it, because you want person X to be happy and productive and introducing a new team member who is going to potentially have conflict with them may not be worth it. Every aspect of your evaluation forms a heuristic in your mind that you can use to decide if they're the right blend of worker for your particular team. I really like trusting a lot of this sort of thing to my hindbrain. There's a lot of magic happening back there that combines things in a big-data sort of way that we don't consciously understand, but when it comes to interactions with other humans, we evolved to be good at this kind of judgement - since it's life or death, in the state of nature - and we should trust our instincts, provided we've tuned them to not be irrationally prejudiced.