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Hiring side. "Tell me more about what you did." Can be asked off almost any line of conversation. I'm seeking two outcomes: 1. Candidate's ability to quickly

by basseq 8y ago

Hiring side. "Tell me more about what you did." Can be asked off almost any line of conversation. I'm seeking two outcomes: 1. Candidate's ability to quickly articulate a complex process, organization, problem, etc. to someone who has absolutely no understanding of it (i.e., me). 2. An understanding of their specific role and impact, as well as how the team worked together. You often have to coach people through the latter, as many candidates will default to the royal-we. The other one I'm playing with is, "Let's say you start working here, but six months later, you leave for another opportunity. Why would you leave?" I'm still figuring out the delivery on that one, but you get an interesting insight into what matters to the candidate.

ohithereyou 8y ago
The first question you propose is the first question I ask in every interview that I conduct, and I can count on my fingers the number of people who have given me a satisfactory answer to this question. It really colors my perception of your skills - whether you lied on your resume, whether you were dead weight on your team while they did all of the work, whether you were clueful about what was going on where you were working before, and so on. The only time that I have recommended someone be hired who was not able to answer this question was when they were under an NDA and were not able to talk about the work they had done. That candidate aced the practical side of the interview that I gave ("Here's a scenario at a high level using the skills you claim to have, what would you do and why?") and is the best worker I have ever recommended to hire.
vkou 8y ago
The honest answers to the second question aren't very nice, and have everything to do with the character of the persons employed at a firm. Why would I leave a firm in six months? Most likely because my boss is an asshole. Am I daft enough to get into that with an interviewer, who may be that boss? No.
- tilolebo 8y ago
  I'd rather not get a job that very probably do not fit me anyway, instead of finding out after having left that my new boss is an asshole. The overhead of starting again the job search from scratch, explaining why I want to quit after 6 months (for real this time) is much bigger.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Just because my interviewer asks me that question, doesn't make him an ass. Likewise, just because they would interpret that answer as a black mark, doesn't make him an ass. Maybe the reason I run into asses all the time, is because I am one. Even if they don't interpret it as a black mark, it's a pretty daft way to start a professional relationship. There's too many unknowns, so the correct course of action is to make up some non-confrontational lie.
ThrowawayR2 8y ago
> "Let's say you start working here, but six months later, you leave for another opportunity. Why would you leave?" That would be such a huge red flag for a interviewee. Does this team have such severe issues with frequent turnover that the interviewer feels the need to ask such a question? Is there some sort of dysfunction in the organization that the interviewer isn't telling me about? Not to mention, as another poster pointed out, there's no honest answer to that question that sounds good.
cosmie 8y ago
Hiring side, your first question is a favorite of mine. A corollary to your first outcome is an understanding the candidate's situational awareness. How well the candidate grasps a complex process, organization, problem, etc. Even if they struggle to articulate the complexity well, it's possible to probe their response a bit to grasp if it's an articulation issue or an awareness issue. Note that there are no right or wrong answers for how they respond, only aligning the the person with the role. If the role is subject to a lot of volatility, complexity, or outside influence, a high degree of situational awareness is critical. For roles that are more insulated, it's perfectly fine if they don't pick up on that stuff. Same for other aspects of the role. If the workload is fairly monotonous or is a backfill roll with relatively well defined and stable needs, identifying someone that is content and has a preference for that is critical. There's a whole range from repetitive, mind-numbing roles to roles that are dynamic in the day-to-day sense but narrowly scoped around a specific need/focus to roles that are currently ill-defined but will stabilize in the near term to roles that's will be a never ending stream of entropy thrown at you but scoped to a specific dimension to roles that will be a never ending stream of entropy from multiple dimensions. The bulk of my interviews tend to be exploratory conversations that jump off at this question. Matching the candidate to both the work environment in general and the role in particular, it pre-empts a lot of potential points of friction that would lead to early attrition. And for candidates that get hired, gives me a solid foundation to start with in understanding how to support and manage that individual. That said, I don't recommend that interviewing style to everyone. If your own situational awareness isn't well developed, it's hard to gauge someone else's from this line of questioning. It can also lead to misreading a candidate's response, as well as making it hard to organically evolve the conversation to dive deeper. Which may or may not be needed for the role you're hiring for, but is something to be aware of.

by basseq 8y ago

ohithereyou 8y ago

The first question you propose is the first question I ask in every interview that I conduct, and I can count on my fingers the number of people who have given me a satisfactory answer to this question. It really colors my perception of your skills - whether you lied on your resume, whether you were dead weight on your team while they did all of the work, whether you were clueful about what was going on where you were working before, and so on. The only time that I have recommended someone be hired who was not able to answer this question was when they were under an NDA and were not able to talk about the work they had done. That candidate aced the practical side of the interview that I gave ("Here's a scenario at a high level using the skills you claim to have, what would you do and why?") and is the best worker I have ever recommended to hire.

vkou 8y ago

The honest answers to the second question aren't very nice, and have everything to do with the character of the persons employed at a firm. Why would I leave a firm in six months? Most likely because my boss is an asshole. Am I daft enough to get into that with an interviewer, who may be that boss? No.

tilolebo 8y ago
I'd rather not get a job that very probably do not fit me anyway, instead of finding out after having left that my new boss is an asshole. The overhead of starting again the job search from scratch, explaining why I want to quit after 6 months (for real this time) is much bigger.
- vkou 8y ago
  Just because my interviewer asks me that question, doesn't make him an ass. Likewise, just because they would interpret that answer as a black mark, doesn't make him an ass. Maybe the reason I run into asses all the time, is because I am one. Even if they don't interpret it as a black mark, it's a pretty daft way to start a professional relationship. There's too many unknowns, so the correct course of action is to make up some non-confrontational lie.

ThrowawayR2 8y ago

> "Let's say you start working here, but six months later, you leave for another opportunity. Why would you leave?" That would be such a huge red flag for a interviewee. Does this team have such severe issues with frequent turnover that the interviewer feels the need to ask such a question? Is there some sort of dysfunction in the organization that the interviewer isn't telling me about? Not to mention, as another poster pointed out, there's no honest answer to that question that sounds good.

cosmie 8y ago

Hiring side, your first question is a favorite of mine. A corollary to your first outcome is an understanding the candidate's situational awareness. How well the candidate grasps a complex process, organization, problem, etc. Even if they struggle to articulate the complexity well, it's possible to probe their response a bit to grasp if it's an articulation issue or an awareness issue. Note that there are no right or wrong answers for how they respond, only aligning the the person with the role. If the role is subject to a lot of volatility, complexity, or outside influence, a high degree of situational awareness is critical. For roles that are more insulated, it's perfectly fine if they don't pick up on that stuff. Same for other aspects of the role. If the workload is fairly monotonous or is a backfill roll with relatively well defined and stable needs, identifying someone that is content and has a preference for that is critical. There's a whole range from repetitive, mind-numbing roles to roles that are dynamic in the day-to-day sense but narrowly scoped around a specific need/focus to roles that are currently ill-defined but will stabilize in the near term to roles that's will be a never ending stream of entropy thrown at you but scoped to a specific dimension to roles that will be a never ending stream of entropy from multiple dimensions. The bulk of my interviews tend to be exploratory conversations that jump off at this question. Matching the candidate to both the work environment in general and the role in particular, it pre-empts a lot of potential points of friction that would lead to early attrition. And for candidates that get hired, gives me a solid foundation to start with in understanding how to support and manage that individual. That said, I don't recommend that interviewing style to everyone. If your own situational awareness isn't well developed, it's hard to gauge someone else's from this line of questioning. It can also lead to misreading a candidate's response, as well as making it hard to organically evolve the conversation to dive deeper. Which may or may not be needed for the role you're hiring for, but is something to be aware of.