The only worse thing than an open position is having it filled with the wrong person, a.k.a “It’s better to have a hole than an asshole in your team”.
There is a very simple technique to excel interviewing for culture fit, like a small secret weapon.
Let’s start with the whole process
It is advised that the hiring process is managed by the hiring manager, not by HR, because the hiring manager is accountable for the success in the role, for retention or attrition. HR is definitely important, in administering the process — scheduling, legal, consulting, and more.
A common requisition process looks like this:
- Decide that you need to hire. This is not trivial — you need to think whether the current team can handle the workload and has the required skills. This is also the case when someone leaves – do not hire a replacement as a knee-jerk reaction.
- Get approval from management.
- Decide which skills are required for the role, technical and soft skills.
- Decide which skills are nice-to-have for the role, technical and soft skills.
- Write the job ad, stating the mission of the role, i.e. why it exists, the required and nice-to-have skills. Go over it with a gender-bias detection tool, such as this.
- Notify the recruiter and meet to discuss the hiring process. You will need to prepare the job ad, starting date, salary range, seniority level, which interviews will take place, their duration and who can interview.
- Job ad is posted and probably marketed.
- Candidates start applying.
- Screening and interviewing take place.
- Optimize the process (e.g. add or remove a stage, change interviewers, training).
- Make offers.
- “Close” (an offer is accepted).
- Start onboarding.
An example of a hiring process for a senior backend engineer
- Screening (resume, cover letter), by Recruiter — basic match of CVs to the jobs, motivation, location, salary expectations
- Phone screening, by Recruiter, 45 minutes, (nowadays it is video, somehow many keep the old name) — intro, communication skills, motivation, salary expectations, visa, status, basic match to the role
- Hiring Manager call, by the hiring manager, 45 minutes — deeper intro, a mix of technical and soft skills questions
- Home challenge (several days to complete)
- Technical interview, by team members, 55 minutes — match to the technical skills
- Culture fit, by team members
General interviewer advice
Show up! I’ve been interviewing recently, and some interviewers didn’t show up and didn’t notify. Asking them what happened, they replied that they had something important. You can bet that continuing the process is very questionable.
Show up on time! From the interviewers that did show up only 1 out of 19 showed up on time. The delays were between 1 and 7 minutes. Some over phone, some over video. During this waiting, not doing something else I could have been doing, I questioned myself if I had the right link, the right phone number, the right time zone, and started scanning my emails and LinkedIn messages. This is not contributing to the success of the interview.
Time: we have very short time with our candidate and we need to make the most of it. That means, we keep the intros short, and do not spend time teaching the candidate things they don’t know. We also don’t ask random questions that will not help us evaluate their fit for the role.
No comparison: we do not compare our current candidates and simply pick the best one. We pick anyone who is above the bar we decided and make an offer.
Candidate questions: give little room for the candidate’s questions — many argue that it makes no sense for us to let them to ask at that point, because the ball is on our side, we haven’t decided to make an offer yet, and after we offer, there will be plenty of time for that.
The benefits of giving question time (which can be even only 5 minutes) are:
1) Let them quickly see if there is no basic match from their side, saving everyone time if not
2) Learn more about them — what do they ask about? How mature they are? Only “what’s in it for me” kind of questions, like vacation days and perks? Or about culture, processes, career development, decision making process and a typical day?
3) Sell the job — if there is a match, it’s another place to sell the job. E.g. candidate tells she never had 1:1s and she’d love to have, asking whether your company has them, then you can explain that you do and how they are done, earning more engagement from her.
Listen to your gut: if you don’t trust the candidate or you’re not excited about them, even if you cannot put the finger on it, take note and possibly reject them. This can be a result of subtle things, like body language that doesn’t match what is being said, or more obvious things like lack of energy or arrogance.
Look for reasons to say no: It’s easy to “fall in love” with a specific skill or trait or skill the candidate has (e.g. they know your technology really well). We must look for the negative signals – they do not mean the candidate is rejected, but we must capture them and think if we can live with them or coach.
Write down: write down info during interview. You will not remember. Write down quick notes, like “clues” for yourself, and capture as soon as possible after the interview in the applicants tracking system.
Remove distractions: shut down Slack, email and phone beforehand. Seeing a notification of hearing it is enough to distract. Interviewees will clearly see once you start dealing with something else.
Look at data: do all candidates pass the culture fit interview? Do all fail? What do you need to do to make it effective?
Functional interview
I am assuming that the interview for functional skills and knowledge is the most understood one. It is comprised of theoretical and practical questions, that are agreed upon beforehand, and interviewers know how to solve them (maybe in more than one way).
Culture fit interview
A.k.a “team fit” or “peer interview”. Its goal is to assess the match of the candidates values and behaviors to the team’s and the company’s.
It is not checking whether it would be nice to have a beer with the candidate.
The questions need to be prepared in advance and cover the values and behaviors we’re interested in. For example about teamwork, learning from mistakes, giving negative feedback, missing a deadline or going the extra mile.
The secret
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This is the reason we want to ask about very specific cases that happened.
For example: “Can you share a case where you had a conflict with a team member?”
Or even better, with a short intro: “We’ve learned that when we are proactive, we do much better. Can you give an example of an initiative you suggested and what was the outcome?”
Very often, candidates try to give a generic textbook answer, or what they assume we want to hear. For example: “In case of conflict, one should talk about it and find a solution”. In this case, you could reply: “I know, and the question is if you can share a case where you had a conflict”. This usually works.
In some cases, candidates try to avoid. “I never had a conflict in 20 years, I am a good person.” This shows a lot about their perception of conflict, for you to judge. Another one: “Can you share a mistake you did and what happened?” Replied with “I forgot a semicolon and my colleague found it in code review”.
In others, they just don’t have an example. You can skip and ask other questions. I noticed that engaged candidates take a note and try to find an answer later on during the interview.
I suggest to revise the questions and change as many as possible to behavioral ones, and benchmark the difference in outcome.
For more info, I highly recommend to read The Effective Hiring Manager and follow everything Manager Tools and Career Tools produce.
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