7 ms·

I often ask interviewees about a project they worked on that was very successful, and why it was successful - what did they like about it? That's a good way to

by beat 8y ago

I often ask interviewees about a project they worked on that was very successful, and why it was successful - what did they like about it? That's a good way to find those passion points. It's also a good way to find weak candidates without independence or leadership skills, because they can't really talk about their role in a big success - they didn't have much of a role, usually. A flip-side question is to ask about projects they worked on that failed. Failures rarely appear on resumes, and it can be an uncomfortable topic. But if you can get them going, you can learn a ton about how they handle adversity. Do they make excuses, or find scapegoats? Do they take responsibility? Do they give credit where credit is due for colleagues? Do they recognize the big-picture conditions that affected the situation?

HarryHirsch 8y ago
projects they worked on that failed That's a bad one, considering that everyone is supposed to be upbeat and positive in the face of adversity. You can't place blame on management and the environment that was in no way conducive to success because that's not culturally acceptable. Are we supposed to prepare an answer for that question now as well because the true answer (unrealistic expectations from upper management and insufficient infrastructure) will make you fail the interview? What you could ask is what will make a team fail, and my answer would be autocratic management.
- beat 8y ago
  - Are we supposed to prepare an answer for that question now as well? Nope. I don't want a prepared answer. I want an honest answer. Hence throwing them a rough, non-technical question that absolutely will not be on the resume, but has been part of the career of any experienced candidate. "Autocratic management" isn't a good answer, because it's too general. What did autocratic management do? Were the requirements incomplete? The schedule unrealistic? Beaten by the competition? Depended on unproven technology? Sometimes, everyone does everything right, and a project fails anyway. There's still a reason it failed. But when I hear a candidate talk about failure in the form of "I was a hero, but my idiot co-workers and malicious bosses ruined everything", I hear them finding someone to blame, rather than a problem that didn't get solved correctly. And that tells me a lot about what working with them will be like, when we have our inevitable failures.
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    How would a life scientist coming from Theranos before it became common knowledge that the company was a sham talk about their experience in a culturally acceptable manner? Developing reproducible blood tests from tiniest samples was never going to work, and upper management was actively malicious at that company. We now know where the blame was (with Holmes and Balwani), but if you started there because their projects sounded exciting and then were looking for a new job because the task was impossible and management was crazy you had a problem, and you can't say that in an interview.
    - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
      "I worked on an awesome project and just kept my head down and worked like a good employee. Then one day I read the WSJ one day, and what do you know, my boss was getting investigated for fraud! Then the company shut down! I had no idea, because the sub project I was on worked perfectly. I heard people complain about managers, but they were on other teams and I didn't see them very much."
      - reificator 8y ago
        > before it became common knowledge that the company was a sham
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      how do you know that "reproducible tests from small samples " would never work? Is there an equivalent of Shannons law that you could prove this.
      - HarryHirsch 8y ago
        Venous blood is simply venous blood. But capillary blood from fingertip samples contains variable amounts of interstitial fluid, and cell lysis is another issue there. There are tests where it doesn't matter - consider the blood glucose - the variability of capillary samples vs venous samples is well understood and the introduced error sufficiently small compared to reference range. But Theranos also tried electrolyte panels, and there you have a problem because the concentrations of ions in blood plasma are very different from the concentrations of ions inside cells. Both are tightly controlled in the healthy body. Slightly less than 50 % of blood is cellular matter, and even small amounts of lysis are sufficient to distort the numbers to render them clinically meaningless. You inevitably have lysis in capillary samples. Carreyrou talks about that in his book.
- aplummer 8y ago
  This is a really good point about expectations in job interviews. I think a lot of this comes down to "how you say it" and the data points you have to back it up. For example, "we made several governance mistakes on a project that meant we didn't have enough time to finish the project. On the next project, I made sure to be clearer with estimates and buffer time, so that the team etc. etc." and "Our management doesn't listen" can describe the same situation. Again, definitely agree you are in the danger zone so its important to be thoughtful.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Why and in which culture is this not acceptable
mdpopescu 8y ago
Given that most people quit because of bad managers [1], I assume that a lot of projects fail for the same reason. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employees-dont-leave-companies-managers-brigette-hyacinth/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employees-dont-leave-companie...
rorykoehler 8y ago
>they can't really talk about their role in a big success - they didn't have much of a role, usually. I would wager that at least half of candidates are just good humble team players. Your approach optimises for egotistical braggarts at the expense of normal people.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  That raises a question: how can “good humble teammates” answer these types of questions in a way that makes them look good without lying?
  - beat 8y ago
    Assuming they did good, valuable work, then telling the truth is an excellent way to answer in a way that looks good without lying.
    - pmiller2 8y ago
      But, then, how do you show "leadership" and "ownership" and all those other wonderful things interviewers are supposedly looking for? And it's not just "good, valuable work" they're looking for. Fixing bugs is "good, valuable work," but I get the feeling interviewers don't want to hear about how many bugs you've fixed. I often have a hard time putting my accomplishments into context (indeed, even seeing them as "accomplishments," because they're simply what I'm supposed to do). (Incidentally, I hate the word "ownership" in this context. You don't own anything you can't take with you. Try taking work you did for a company with you when you leave.)
- beat 8y ago
  Egotistical bragging is pretty easy to spot. Good team players are easy to spot, too - they're the ones giving credit to leadership and co-workers even for work they take personal pride in. When I see a candidate's eyes light up talking about the manager who led them through a challenge into success, I know they respect others, and that matters. It's hard for a lot of people to speak well of themselves, which makes the whole interviewing process difficult much of the time. We're trained to a beat-down that gets called humility, but it's not. Asking about successes is a way past that - it's giving them permission to say something good about themselves. But to be fair, a lot of what I'm after is inflated claims on a resume, which are common as dirt, because people are much more comfortable deceptively bragging on paper than they are in person.

by beat 8y ago

HarryHirsch 8y ago

projects they worked on that failed That's a bad one, considering that everyone is supposed to be upbeat and positive in the face of adversity. You can't place blame on management and the environment that was in no way conducive to success because that's not culturally acceptable. Are we supposed to prepare an answer for that question now as well because the true answer (unrealistic expectations from upper management and insufficient infrastructure) will make you fail the interview? What you could ask is what will make a team fail, and my answer would be autocratic management.

beat 8y ago
- Are we supposed to prepare an answer for that question now as well? Nope. I don't want a prepared answer. I want an honest answer. Hence throwing them a rough, non-technical question that absolutely will not be on the resume, but has been part of the career of any experienced candidate. "Autocratic management" isn't a good answer, because it's too general. What did autocratic management do? Were the requirements incomplete? The schedule unrealistic? Beaten by the competition? Depended on unproven technology? Sometimes, everyone does everything right, and a project fails anyway. There's still a reason it failed. But when I hear a candidate talk about failure in the form of "I was a hero, but my idiot co-workers and malicious bosses ruined everything", I hear them finding someone to blame, rather than a problem that didn't get solved correctly. And that tells me a lot about what working with them will be like, when we have our inevitable failures.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  How would a life scientist coming from Theranos before it became common knowledge that the company was a sham talk about their experience in a culturally acceptable manner? Developing reproducible blood tests from tiniest samples was never going to work, and upper management was actively malicious at that company. We now know where the blame was (with Holmes and Balwani), but if you started there because their projects sounded exciting and then were looking for a new job because the task was impossible and management was crazy you had a problem, and you can't say that in an interview.
  - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
    "I worked on an awesome project and just kept my head down and worked like a good employee. Then one day I read the WSJ one day, and what do you know, my boss was getting investigated for fraud! Then the company shut down! I had no idea, because the sub project I was on worked perfectly. I heard people complain about managers, but they were on other teams and I didn't see them very much."
    - reificator 8y ago
      > before it became common knowledge that the company was a sham
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    how do you know that "reproducible tests from small samples " would never work? Is there an equivalent of Shannons law that you could prove this.
    - HarryHirsch 8y ago
      Venous blood is simply venous blood. But capillary blood from fingertip samples contains variable amounts of interstitial fluid, and cell lysis is another issue there. There are tests where it doesn't matter - consider the blood glucose - the variability of capillary samples vs venous samples is well understood and the introduced error sufficiently small compared to reference range. But Theranos also tried electrolyte panels, and there you have a problem because the concentrations of ions in blood plasma are very different from the concentrations of ions inside cells. Both are tightly controlled in the healthy body. Slightly less than 50 % of blood is cellular matter, and even small amounts of lysis are sufficient to distort the numbers to render them clinically meaningless. You inevitably have lysis in capillary samples. Carreyrou talks about that in his book.
aplummer 8y ago
This is a really good point about expectations in job interviews. I think a lot of this comes down to "how you say it" and the data points you have to back it up. For example, "we made several governance mistakes on a project that meant we didn't have enough time to finish the project. On the next project, I made sure to be clearer with estimates and buffer time, so that the team etc. etc." and "Our management doesn't listen" can describe the same situation. Again, definitely agree you are in the danger zone so its important to be thoughtful.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Why and in which culture is this not acceptable

mdpopescu 8y ago

Given that most people quit because of bad managers [1], I assume that a lot of projects fail for the same reason. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employees-dont-leave-companies-managers-brigette-hyacinth/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employees-dont-leave-companie...

rorykoehler 8y ago

>they can't really talk about their role in a big success - they didn't have much of a role, usually. I would wager that at least half of candidates are just good humble team players. Your approach optimises for egotistical braggarts at the expense of normal people.

pmiller2 8y ago
That raises a question: how can “good humble teammates” answer these types of questions in a way that makes them look good without lying?
- beat 8y ago
  Assuming they did good, valuable work, then telling the truth is an excellent way to answer in a way that looks good without lying.
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    But, then, how do you show "leadership" and "ownership" and all those other wonderful things interviewers are supposedly looking for? And it's not just "good, valuable work" they're looking for. Fixing bugs is "good, valuable work," but I get the feeling interviewers don't want to hear about how many bugs you've fixed. I often have a hard time putting my accomplishments into context (indeed, even seeing them as "accomplishments," because they're simply what I'm supposed to do). (Incidentally, I hate the word "ownership" in this context. You don't own anything you can't take with you. Try taking work you did for a company with you when you leave.)
beat 8y ago
Egotistical bragging is pretty easy to spot. Good team players are easy to spot, too - they're the ones giving credit to leadership and co-workers even for work they take personal pride in. When I see a candidate's eyes light up talking about the manager who led them through a challenge into success, I know they respect others, and that matters. It's hard for a lot of people to speak well of themselves, which makes the whole interviewing process difficult much of the time. We're trained to a beat-down that gets called humility, but it's not. Asking about successes is a way past that - it's giving them permission to say something good about themselves. But to be fair, a lot of what I'm after is inflated claims on a resume, which are common as dirt, because people are much more comfortable deceptively bragging on paper than they are in person.