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The single most effective interview question I ask: "What do you want to do?". I drill down on that to a granulator level as I try to make sure the tasks, dutie
by rrggrr 8y ago
The single most effective interview question I ask: "What do you want to do?". I drill down on that to a granulator level as I try to make sure the tasks, duties and overall position matches what the candidate really wants for themselves. Its followed-up with a "How would you do it?", again persisting in the discussion (not interrogation) until we both are comfortable with the sensibility and symmetry of the answers.
- wonderbear 8y agoI'm going to try this. The questions my team comes up with haven't been very satisfying and this seems like a good way to find out what they do know vs what they don't.
- rrggrr 8y agoI learned this from one of the best recruiters in finance. I can't take credit for it.
- pinewurst 8y agoThat may be a good conversational start but I'm less certain that anyone really knows at any deep granularity what they want to do (professionally). There are a lot of roads to autonomy, mastery and purpose, and a lot of speed traps/bad exits. My current job, which I've just resigned because it became so awful, was on the surface what I wanted to do, until it changed. It would be difficult to discuss the before and after in this context, for example.
- eip 8y agoIf you think anyone 'really' wants to build your shitty CRUD app then you are deluding yourself. Do you 'really' love your job? Would you do it for free?
- rrggrr 8y agoOuch. So, I'm not in the software business, but either way the point of my Q&A is measure the distance between what an employee wants to during the day versus what probably needs to be done to accomplish the desired result. When the gap is big the hire/job never works out.
- eip 8y ago> what an employee wants What I 'want' to do during the day is be a sunscreen boy for the Reef bikini team. What I am willing to tolerate in exchange for money is considerably wider ranging. No one 'wants' to be trapped in some corporate soul sucking nightmare for five days a week.
- biztos 8y agoI might not want your shitty CRUD app to exist per se, but the building of it might not be half bad, and I might learn something useful on the way and maybe even make some new friends. It's not unreasonable to look for a job where some of it is what you'd do for free, if you didn't need the money.
- eip 8y agoThere is an enormous gap between being able to tolerate working on something vs 'really' wanting to work on something.
- yAak 8y agoI'd build his/her CRUD app, and make sure it wasn't shitty, if I felt it had potential to be a useful product and also felt like the people I met would be good to work with/for. I've learned the hard way that I much prefer quality of life over "sexy dev work." (...and obviously take both if I can find it.)
- noelsusman 8y agoYes, I would. Probably not for 40 hours a week, but I would.
- Alterlife 8y agoWow, I'm sorry but I think that's terrible for the candidate. You have a job description and you shared that with them. You're basically hiring the most talented bullshitter. Very few people will know exactly what they want to do in the next few years. There is only what you as the employer need to get done and what they as an employee are willing and able to do.
- Timmah 8y agoIts only bulshitting if people don't want to work there. Presumably they read the description and said "that looks cool, I want to do that". You should be able to look your employer in the eye and honestly say what you want from the job and discuss it like adults. Not dance around with a corporate-speak ritual telling them what you think they want to hear.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoWell, let's be honest. The vast majority of jobs are just that: jobs. They're not something that anyone particularly wants to do; they're just willing to do it because it's better than the alternative.