Two questions that must be asked in an interview


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Importance of interview in an organization?

Hiring is one of the most critical task required for any organization to succeed. A CEOs job is half done if he or she is able to hire the right set of people. While a wrong set of people can not only undo what has already been accomplished but can potentially set the company on a vicious path. This makes interviewing as one of the most important but highly underrated skill in any organization. In my career, I have seen people ask all sorts of questions leading to candidates answering them using their full creativity irrespective of what they have actually done. Thus making sure that the candidate is truthful in answering the questions is critical part of interview and this is what we are going to focus in this article.

Pitfalls of interview

There are multiple pitfalls in an interview process like determining culture fit, enthusiasm about the job profile but as pointed out earlier one of the greatest problem is determining the truth in answers. How do you know that what candidate is saying is the stuff that he has already done? Even if someone is partially involved it’s so easy to call out a work that was done by a third person as his or her and claim all the accolades. This is especially true for technology world where its super easy to understand the architecture of the system and then claim credit for the entire system as if it was done by the candidate himself. This narrative can change the story of the interview process from not being selected to selected which in such kind of case would be super wrong as the person might not have the capability based on which he was selected. This might lead to failures within the current system and restart of the interview loop. If it takes 2-3 months to hire, then even if we consider fast failure, the timeline for evaluation would be minimum 6 months and then add another 2-3 months for hiring again. This makes the overall time as close to 1 year which is huge. For small companies this could be catastrophic. In any case there would be some financial impact. Additionally, there will indirect impact both on the team and the company.

What this article is going to address and explain?

In my career, I have taken more than 150 technical interviews and in the process got an opportunity to speak with multiple interviewers. Based on those conversations and multiple ideas that were shared, I have found 2 ideas to be most effective in the interview and can help in mitigating the truth problem for sure. I now make it a practice to use them in my interviews especially for senior position. Below are the two questions that I recommend that everyone should ask to candidates in the interview

1.     Ask candidate to talk about the project that he is most proud of. Then ask for another project and then another. The next set of questions would be based on this third project.
2.     Ask for a bug that he has fixed in the project.

Why the above questions would work?

Now let me explain how the above two points would work magically and you would be able to judge the caliber of the candidate in the right way.
1.     The first step you want to do is un-prepare the candidate. For any interview, most of the folks do a lot of preparation regarding the projects that they have done. If we want the right candidate, the evaluation should not be of the preparation but of the actual work that the person has done. For any person, preparation largely revolves around one project or at most two projects. If you ask for third favorite or most impactful project, then it’s highly unlikely that the person would have been prepared. Then you can deep dive and ask questions and you would get the truthful answers. If the person cannot come up with a third project then his impact in limited. Then the ball would be a in a different court and the question would be whether you would like to evaluate a candidate with limited career impact especially for any senior position.
2.     Asking for a bug fix. This might appear as a simple and trivial question but actually this is one of the most powerful question. If you think about it, if someone has been a part of a project and contributed significantly to it then he or she would be aware of at least one bug that was reported and fixed. This knowledge about the bug fix would indicate that he does not have superficial knowledge but knows about the projects. Indirectly he has actually worked on the project.

Happy interviewing!!





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