Interviewing principles and tips.

The number of interviews I’ve run is in 3 figures with unsuccessful hires being in single digits.  Given the number of bad AI generated articles on this site I wanted to share how I approach interviews now after a significant amount of time and effort in defining my style.

I hope even if you don’t agree or do things your way firstly great and let us know what you do well, I hope at least I make you think and challenge how your running interviews.

I won’t go into details of laws etc that’s for you to do, I would suggest at the very minimum creating clear notes on each candidate, what you asked and what their answer was and ensure you have a core list of questions you ask all candidates.

In a world where there are a significant number of people applying for each role it you may think that it’s a great position to be a hiring manager and it is in some regards.  It does come with challenges because you want the best candidates to interview.

I cover the following areas:

Hire people for what they can do.

You’re not hiring a direct replacement.

I want people to succeed at interviews

Where do you see the person in 5 years?

Its ok to hire people that don’t want to be a CTO

Be honest

Mini me

Team fit

Bring the team along

Hire people for what they can do.

Sounds like a great soundbite but what does it really mean?  Let me give you some examples. 

I am dyslexic I am open about it in interviews really the only downside is my spelling sucks but there are two great mitigating factors, 1 spell check, 2 when I write on whiteboards the word might not be spelt correctly but you will be able to tell what is means to say.  Now the flip side is a creative mind that has created great outcomes because I think slightly differently.

I hired a working mum who couldn’t work school holidays, I did this because the value I got from her when she was working far outweighed the difficultly when she wasn’t there.  She had a huge wealth of experience in areas my current team didn’t.  Of course, this dictated a focus on her upskilling other team members (which should be there anyway) and it did cause some small issues but she was so far above the other candidates id have been silly to not say yes.

A friend of mine had 6 years out to be a stay-at-home mum, she was and is exceptionally talented at what she does. When returning to look for work she found even getting her CV put forward to a company through agencies.  Eventually she applied directly to a company who hired her and neither have looked back since.

Thinking this way opens up more options for team make up and I strongly believe the more diverse a team the better the end product.  Also they have shown they are honest and will be highly motivated and loyal employees so as long as what they can do hits your minimum requirement then there’s no down side.

You’re not hiring a direct replacement.

This may be controversial, or blatantly obvious let me know which you think!

The person who was in the role has left, probably to find something “better” elsewhere.  Better is generally more money and/or a promotion.  They will have been in your company for at least 18 months, they will know your processes and ways of working and they will know your customers and stakeholders.

The person your recruiting will not have that experience of your company. They obviously can’t but they will at some point.  You may well have also got the best out of the person leaving they were at the end of the journey and you should have all been benefiting from the shared journey to that point.

This realisation informs a curiosity of what extra can the new person bring. 

They may be able to use their experience to help move your team forwards in different ways than originally planned. They may have skills in different areas I wont draw one but their spider chart of skills could look very different but add so much more value than would have been seen if the leaver had stayed.

I want people to succeed at interviews.

I want every person I interview to be amazing, a perfect situation is to have a number of candidates who are good enough to do the role and they bring different experiences and ways of working to the table. 

I don’t try to catch people out and I will actively try to help get the most out of the interviewee.  Theres a few things I do to achieve this, if I think the candidate only sort of answered the question or I think there is more to be said, I will follow up the initial question with another.  Whilst I have fixed questions, I will be led by their prior responses to inform what to ask next. 

For example, they mention they have run a successful upgrade project, I will dig into that to understand what makes them think it was successful and try to be better informed on their suitability as a result.

If they seem nervous, I have mentioned it and then looked to help get them to relax.  Equally if they are going off track I will for everyone’s sake bring it back on topic.

There have been some roles where I haven’t done this because the nature of the role and their ability to do it was aligned to their ability to interview successfully.  Other than that, I rarely really need the person who is best at giving interviews.  I want the person who will be the most successful at the role I am hiring for.

A real example is when I hired a senior technical contractor, his interview was excellent I offered him the role, my initial engagement with him went really well until the time he delivered his first piece of work.  It was terrible and bore no resemblance to what we spoke about.  This was a trend that continued for a while until it became clear that was his way of working, thankfully as a contractor it was ultimately easy to resolve.  At the time I thought it was similar to having the most amazing looking and smelling coffee maker only to constantly through the cup of coffee made by it away

It's incredibly hard to draw this type of thing out in interviews but it is easy to give people the best opportunity to be successful.

Where do you see the person in 5 years?

I am not a big advocate of the direct question where you see yourself in 5 years.  I have learnt from both having and giving interviews that the hiring manager you really need to know where you see the person in 5 years.

It would seem most people want highly driven and motivated people with a desire to rise up the ladder.  There are draw back with such people the first is does the position give that springboard.  Most roles don’t lead to anywhere else in the company, you may be able to move sideways to learn new skills, you may be given more responsibility, there may be the opportunity to get promoted, in my experience though many roles don’t lead down a certain path.

I ve been at a company where promotion would take years if I was hiring in my team my position wouldn’t be free for years so promotion for them would stall even if there was no succession plan in place.  If id hired a highly driven person there wasn’t much prospect of them growing how they wanted.  This is really the value of asking the question at interview is to ensure alignment on opportunities.

Whilst not ideal it is ok though for some roles to be transient you get people in they deliver value perhaps can get from a consultant to a senior consultant position and then leave for new opportunities.  What important is you know what your role is and get the right person for the role.  This leads me nicely onto..

Its ok to hire people that don’t want to be a CTO

I have been told during interview by the candidate that they were happy to stay doing this level of role he didn’t want to go into management or go the architect route, I hired him.

Of course, there’s caveats the person needs to add value at all times, ideally come with new ways of working to enhance the team, and be open to, support and embrace changes to ways of working etc.  If that’s the case then it can be really helpful to have such people, they know the job and company intimately, they will be trusted by stakeholders and customers, they form a consistent core to help transition new people into the team.

You will need to manage the situation to ensure they don’t become too comfortable, but most managers need a trusted lieutenant and there’s nothing wrong with hiring with that in mind.

Be honest

Some companies and roles are harder than others, it may be due to company culture, difficult stakeholders, or a highly visible high stress position.  Whilst that is ok the issue arises when you are hiring for such a position, and you don’t mention it.

If I know I need someone with more resilience than normal I will highlight it in the interview as part of the role introduction.  I will also ask questions relating to that situation in the interview. 

I know this doesn’t sit well with everyone ive been told! I stand by it the worst situation with a new hire is that they are unhappy or unable to deliver in the environment  they find themselves in.  Not only have you spent thousands on agency fees, you have spent time going through interviews and will need to do it again, you’ve probably lost the incumbent so a controlled handover is impossible. 

They have been forced to look for a new role and have left a role and you shouldn’t be ok with damaging someone’s career or reputation because you hired someone for a role when you could have told them.  For the sake of a few sentences it becomes very apparent if someone is up for the challenge, interview (if not before) is a great place to give them time to think is this really what they want.

Mini me

Something I’ve seen is teams where everyone thinks and acts like the manager.  Iive found that its because they feel comfortable with people that think and behave like themselves.  This is the antipathies of how I build teams, I have always found the more diversity in a team, it really doesn’t matter what the diversity is, gender, social background, neuro diversity, age the list is endless.

 It matters that it exists, the reason is simple, everyone approaches situations and challenges in different ways, I believe this is informed by what a person has lived through.  What they have lived through is frequently influenced by characteristics that if you were to write them down would form a list of categories of diversity.

The more minds you have thinking about things in different ways, challenging and driving things forward the better (with good management) the outcome.  If a team is a toolbox then if everyone is a Phillips screwdriver, you’re not going to get great results if another tool is better suited to the job.  I can imagine its nice and comfortable and from a management point of view to know your team and feel supported by them.  It just doesn’t give you the best outcomes open yourself up to different ways of thinking, working and being challenged (positively). It may be uncomfortable but good managers are comfortable being uncomfortable.

Team fit

Feeding on from mini me, you need to think how the person will integrate into the team what do they bring to enhance the people in the team already.  You then need to think about how easily and successfully they can be integrated into the team. 

If you have people who are reluctant or scared of change, how will you manage a highflyer who is all big impact changes to ways of working etc.  It may be just what you need just don’t underestimate the impact on the wider team, think about how are you going to manage that period of change and bring the team along, or support/prepare the candidate with that challenge when then arrive.

Bring the team along

Most team members who are in interviews are their for either their technical knowledge that the hiring manager may lack or for a second opinion.  I ve been reminded of a third reason from a time I took stewardship of a team and thought it relevant. 

I had never had engagement with them prior to becoming their manager.  I needed to expend the team and I learnt that past hires had been unsuccessful with most leaving at most a year after joining.  

To cut a long story short I found the team to be exceptionally cliquey.  Nothing they did warranted a more serious intervention, they were a group of people who knew each other for years before working together and (charitably perhaps, I am aware I have a very low tolerance to this type of behaviour) they hadn’t considered the impact of being a closed group.  I took four actions to break this down. 

1)      I made very sure what were acceptable behaviours and outcomes of the hiring process and the part they played in that.

2)      Put in place a buddy system where a member of the existing team was responsible for the integration of a new person.

3)      The team interviewed each candidate (obviously after I had ensured the candidates met my expectation.

4)      Whilst I wasn’t the direct line manager of the new hires, I set up one to ones with decreasing frequency (if all was going well) with each new hire.

Whilst it wasn’t perfect none of the new hires left and were all happy in the team this was a stark difference to how it was before I took over. 

The moral of the story is making your team part of the hiring journey even in well-functioning teams is no bad thing.

Conclusion

I hope you have found this useful if you have comments I’d love to hear them.  Can you add anything to this list? 

Happy hiring.