3 ms·

OP here. I ask the candidate to describe a time that they inconvenienced others. Describe the situation, what happened, what happened afterward. Basically pokin

OP here. I ask the candidate to describe a time that they inconvenienced others. Describe the situation, what happened, what happened afterward. Basically poking at the situation to identify humility and accountability. I'm not entirely convinced of this approach because it bias towards people who are good at interviewing or telling a story. So I'm wondering is there other method you found useful?

throwawaysleep 5y ago
I will inconvenience others for my own gain fairly regularly. I know to give a very apologetic answer here and repeatedly be willing to admit I was wrong. Your problem is that you too clearly telegraph the answer you want. It is too obvious that this is a “no jerks” test question. You want a question like this, that I nearly screwed up recently for a team I am on now. “How do you feel about members of the team who you believe is not pulling their weight and how would you address that as their co-worker? How do you ensure that team member doesn’t drag the team down?” Plenty of people answer this question by immediately jumping to termination, complaining to the manager, or some version of “reading the riot act.” You will find little introspection in their answers or interrogation of why that person is underperforming. It seems like a behavioural question on an underperforming colleague. But how they answer says a lot about themselves. Do they trust their immediate judgement that their colleague is underperforming? Do they take the initiative to get them fired? Is there compassion? Do they try to collect evidence and specific details before taking action? My winning answer to this question was a story about how the best engineer I ever knew was fired unfairly because he spent his time helping others and thus was not truly underperforming.

3 ms·

OP here. I ask the candidate to describe a time that they inconvenienced others. Describe the situation, what happened, what happened afterward. Basically pokin

by quantisan 5y ago

throwawaysleep 5y ago
I will inconvenience others for my own gain fairly regularly. I know to give a very apologetic answer here and repeatedly be willing to admit I was wrong. Your problem is that you too clearly telegraph the answer you want. It is too obvious that this is a “no jerks” test question. You want a question like this, that I nearly screwed up recently for a team I am on now. “How do you feel about members of the team who you believe is not pulling their weight and how would you address that as their co-worker? How do you ensure that team member doesn’t drag the team down?” Plenty of people answer this question by immediately jumping to termination, complaining to the manager, or some version of “reading the riot act.” You will find little introspection in their answers or interrogation of why that person is underperforming. It seems like a behavioural question on an underperforming colleague. But how they answer says a lot about themselves. Do they trust their immediate judgement that their colleague is underperforming? Do they take the initiative to get them fired? Is there compassion? Do they try to collect evidence and specific details before taking action? My winning answer to this question was a story about how the best engineer I ever knew was fired unfairly because he spent his time helping others and thus was not truly underperforming.