Interviewing Candidates - MAC022

If you are in any of the LinkedIn groups related to your profession, you've likely come across posts that list questions and answers that are core to your field.  These are the types of questions I would expect to see on a university or certification exam.  These questions are intended to show a level of mastery but, as evidenced by the number of posts offering common examples, a candidate can study for the interview whether they have any first-hand knowledge of the content or not.

I have been interviewing candidates for over twenty years and have never resorted to using this "test question" style of interview.  In that time, I have had very few "misses" in terms of choosing a candidate that is successful within the team.  Instead of asking a lot of test questions, I simply have a conversation with the candidate.

My field is software development, so the conversations I have with candidates is to have them describe the projects they've worked on and what design decisions were made to create it.  I'm not listening for the specifics of the project but to see if they understand the constraints that lead to those decisions.  There are often multiple ways to solve a problem and each one has pros and cons.  If they understand the relationship of those criteria and how the environment of the company influenced them, they are showing more critical thinking than just being able to recite the nuances of any particular design pattern.

Your field likely has similar types of decision points and hiring a candidate with good critical thinking skills is far more important than someone who knows the answers to some contrived questions.  In the real world, people do not work in a vacuum and they have access to various resources such as search engines and books that and provide the specifics of industry accepted practices…..which often change over time anyway.

If you watch for non-verbal cues as they describe their previous projects such as when their eyes glint from excitement or the cadence of their speech quickens, you can see what concepts they understand best without directly asking.  If you're asking test questions, these cues will be harder to discern as they'll be focused on the correctness of their answers.

The other things that I look for in a candidate are the desire to learn and the willingness to share knowledge.  With the desire to learn, I know that even without specific experience they'll still be able to be productive over time as the learn the processes of the team.  And because the other members of the team were hired for THEIR willingness to share knowledge, I know that the team will support the new member to help them progress quickly.  What I've found is that with these three attributes -- critical thinking, desire to learn, and willingness to share -- a candidate will usually fit in with the team and have the potential to be a top performer.

So, what attributes do you look for when you are expanding your team?  Hop over to the Managing A Career community and tell us what you think is important.