Navigating an interview process

The last thing I want is to recruit somebody who ultimately gets into the organisation and finds it's not a fit. Maybe they stay, but their morale is low and they're not happy. I'm not able to look after them very well. And they don't produce very well for the organisation. I don't really want to take that risk. Whereas here, yes, it means I need to work harder because I need to convince the candidate that I'm worthy of their attention, but that works for me because it means I've given them a story that they can then choose to accept, in which case there's a good chance they're a good fit, or decline in which case it's as well they walk away.

If it's a company that values putting the customer first, you're going to get a question about previous experience where maybe there was a bit of tension between what the customer wanted, and what you felt was maybe better, and how you might compromise around that. Maybe there's a value of forgiveness over permission or something like that, which kind of speaks to whether you move forward independently versus kind of building consensus before you move forward with something. In both cases, or in any of these cases, you can think about some examples from your past that you can have at the ready if the question is asked.

But even better is to actually bring them forward before you're asked. I can think again of my own experience as an interviewer, where I have been most excited by a candidate is when I've got this mental checklist of some values that I want to have demonstrated. I have maybe some questions that would probe around them. But if somebody's already jumping in and demonstrating that... in the last couple of years, there's a couple of examples like that that I can think of, that I almost just wanted to go, "Screw the rest of the process. Fuck it. You're the person. You're hired, on the spot."

I think it's about the kinds of questions they ask and the kinds of people they are and the kinds of things that they're used to and that they've done. I think if they're majoring on low-level technical skills in the interview and they're very, very keen to check that you know this is particular language and you can code this particular function, for example... if it's a coding interview, that's one thing. If they're asking you higher level questions about your general ability to think and process information and move quickly, then that's more interesting. They should also be asking questions around operating principles and have a very clear understanding and idea of what they stand for.

One realisation I had was when I was doing a lot of interviews and you're like, ‘Okay, I have two interviews per day.’ You feel like, ‘Yeah, I'm doing every interview and super motivated and giving you my best of everything.’ And then you get a rejection and they say, "You have a nice profile, nice background, but we don't feel like you were as interested as other people."

I realised, okay, there is this kind of interview fatigue that you don't realise you have and it impacts the performance of your interviews, where you're like, ‘I should change my interview skill or do maybe less, but be sure that I'm 100% motivated for each interview.’ Because when you do 20 interviews, you're saying roughly the same thing when you're describing yourself and you start to get kind of tired of your own story and you're just reciting your things mechanically. That's where you are. You make less of an impression to the person who's interviewing you.

I like interviews. I always feel it's something that most people are scared of, but in my opinion, it's once you understand what's going on, it becomes fun. It puts you in a place where like, "Hey, let's see how you're doing. Let's have a conversation."