What to look for when interviewing a candidate
My sister was recently promoted to manage a team of software project managers for a large bank on the East coast. She told me she gets to hire someone for the first time in her career.
I told her that hiring is always a bit of a dice roll, but I offered her some advice after having hired about 15 people at various times in my career:
1. The most important indicator of future success is past success. Good interviewers know this. Dig into people’s past work experience and try to find out if they have been generally successful, or not. Some indicators of this are whether they have changed jobs often. If they jumped jobs on their way up the ladder of responsibility, this is OK. If they jumped sideways, or sometimes down, this is a red flag. Drill them about each job change. You will get interesting results. People will say they were fired, or had fights with their boss or coworkers. These are usually not your desirable candidates. If they fought with their previous peers and managers, chances are they will fight with your group also.
2. Look for enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a great sign of a star employee.
3. Examine their personal lives (you really can’t do this in an interview). But whatever they tell you can be a clue as to how they respond to accountability, pressure, authority, and responsibility. If they hate police, or the government, or have been divorced five times, then they may have issues with authority or responsibility. You have to be careful here because you cannot descriminate.
4. Call their references and ask their references if that person was successful, and if they would re-hire that person. Ask how socially distracting they were inside the workplace, and what time they came in the morning and what time they went home. Ask if they were a good team-member, and if they were typically dependable enough to get things done. Ask why they left and compare their answers to the candidate’s explanation.
5. Because software development is not always a 9-to-5 job, a good question to ask is if they have any extra-curricular activity that would prohibit them from staying late if needed. I have hired people to discover that every day at 5:30 they need to pick up their kid from daycare. This obligation makes them incompatible with leading a team that may require them to stay late and fix a critical problem. This is a good thing to find out before you hire someone for a position like that.
6. Try to get them to express an opinion about something business related and that they are passionate about. Pay attention to how they express their opinion. Do they express themselves dogmatically, as if their opinion is fact and you must argue with them to object, or do they express their opinion in a collaborative way, where they would be more of an asset in a group discussion where others may disagree.
7. Pay attention to how they show up for the interview. Are they on time, and dressed for the part. Did they bring with them a copy of their resume? Are their shoes shiny?
8. Ask them several obvious question about your company to see if they did any research before the interview. Find something on your website homepage that they would know if they looked there before the interview. This is a clue as to their proactive abilities.
9. Pay attention to how they describe their previous workplace, management, and executive staff. This will likely be an indicator of what they will think of your staff.
10. If you sense an extreme level of dissatisfaction, high-maintenance, or lots of questions about what’s in it for them—beware! This is an employee that will likely perform the bare minimum and be unnecessarily needy.
There are lots of books and tips about how to be the interviewee, but not so much is written about how to interview. I wish I could have read these tips years ago when I began hiring people. I hope this helps others and I would be interested in hearing what readers have to add.
Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 am
I’ve never loved this saying “The most important indicator of future success is past success.”
- I think there is a lot more to it. I’ve seen people not perform well for numerous months (even more than a year) all because they just hated their job. People don’t want to do things well when they don’t like doing them.
- I’ve seen instances where employees fought with a boss, later bought part of the business and got rid of the boss because he was the real problem. That being said, even if the person is valuable, I don’t want people on my team that don’t gel with the rest of the company.
- Many former employers will not tell you information about a person other than that they worked there. It’s a policy. They don’t want to get sued over some situation that is unfounded because of bad blood from a manager that leads to a person not getting a job.
- It is illegal to not hire someone based on family situations, so you need to be careful intentionally digging for information of that sort.
- I was 90 minutes late for a job interview once (time mixup) and still got the job. Stuff happens. Don’t make a decision on one event because you could be missing out on a super employee. Call them in for another short interview or two to see what happens. Remember, you’re going to spend 8-10 hours a day with this person (more than your spouse) after only one or two meetings?
My two cents. Thanks for writing this post.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:03 am
I should clarify the first part… these same people later became wildly successful because they found something they loved and they enjoyed the company.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Russ, thank you for your comments, you make a good point. Sometimes people are unchallenged, bored, or not placed in a situation where they have had the ‘desire to succeed’ ignited in them.
I remember reading an article written by Ted Turner, Owner of CNN, AOL, etc, where he mentioned that he was a C+ student in high school. He says that during those school years he just didn’t see the point in applying himself. Once he finished school he realized that he was really good at making money. He applied himself and became wildly successful.
On the other hand, if you have ever attended a high-school reunion have you seen many suprises? My own high-school reunion (almost 20 years now) produced almost no suprises. The student body president was a physician, the student body VP was the US embassdor to Vietnam. The football players were in Iraq fighting Desert Storm, and the parking lot crew was in the corner smoking away. Not many suprises.
You’re right that you can’t predict future performance based on past performance in every situation, but stastically you’ll have fewer suprises if you use that as your benchmark.
People are good at different things, and this is OK. A good manager will match employee strengths to the areas where they are needed the most.
I liked you comment about being 90 minutes late and still getting the job. It reminded me of a job I got once, after unknowingly interviewing with a bird turd drop on my suit. True Story!
September 13th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Sorry, Mr Berry, but I cannot agree with you in your point #5:
You said, “I have hired people to discover that every day at 5:30 they need to pick up their kid from daycare. This obligation makes them incompatible with leading a team that may require them to stay late and fix a critical problem.”
1) If you usually need your people staying late it means your organization is not a good place to work. (Maybe your candidate will not accept your offer).
2) As a father that usually picks up the children from school, I am even more focused than the rest of my colleagues at the office. I have to leave everything ready for the time I leave. (I think this is possitive).
3) A team manager/leader does not need (in my opinion) to be present for the team members to work. In my teams, people are usually very professional and very commited with the objectives, so I have no problems with the time I spend in the office with them: daily stand-ups and one or two pair-programming sessions (1-2 hours each) are enough for a daily basis. (True, I sometimes do some work at home, but things I can do asynchronously with the rest of the team).
I like the way you expose your points and for the rest of your post I think you have listed most of the issues, but I would like to read how such an interview would be seen from the candidate’s point of view because sometimes putting in someone else’s shoes gives us more insight on the issues.
Just one more thing: I have participated in a couple of interviews for project managers that were played as a role-playing. This gave us much more information about the abilites and attitudes of the candidates, although it is more difficult to put into practice than a standard interview, of course.
Best regards,
JMB