Nick Wade

Lately it seems that quite a number of my friends have been moving jobs and companies. I hear a lot about how interviews go as a result, which is interesting because I haven't been through one myself since 2002 (and that was basically "do you like working hard, and beer, and sports?" Go on, guess my answer). I also interview people myself (more on that at bottom). As a result, I've heard a lot about the recent rash of trends to attempt to figure out a candidate's analytical skills, or their general knowledge of a specific subject matter, or personality traits. I was thinking about this on my walk this morning and a couple of things occurred to me about 2 of these trends;

1. Logic and analytical games
There's a huge trend right now to asking questions about the minimum number of steps to find a ball of lower weight from a collection of 8 or 9. Or what happens if a boat is in a pond and a man in the boat throw rocks out of the boat, over the side...blah blah blah. It occurs to me that these are all great questions if you're hiring an analytical thinker, say a business analyst or a development architect. Can that business analyst figure out what happens if they create a new report that intersects sales trends with individual rep figures? (Hint; if the answer is yes, then you are shortly going to be further along the path of figuring out which of your reps need to move on right about now) That's a great question for an analyst. But what does it have to do with G&A staff? Here's what I think they illustrate; you're great at solving logic problems which might or might not be entirely relevant, OR, you were trained how to answer these questions at business school/your last 3 interviews. Are you really hiring on that basis? If so, great, then go for it. But what if you want a creative thinker? You might be worrying about floating the wrong boat on the wrong pond as it were, and I'd encourage you to think about screening differently.

2. Questions about how I would change your product (this is my personal favourite)
I've even seen this one myself of late (sure, we all browse around even if we're not looking, right? Right? You are keeping yourself informed aren't you?). If you're a product person and you fill out an application for a new role you might find yourself answering a question along the lines of "How would you change the/our product?" This really is a loaded question and poor screening technique, and here's why. I don't know your company, I don't know your product (I might know a bit, but certainly not a lot) and I don't know you. So how do I know what you're looking for? There's at least 4 categories (and likely more) that you could fit into and the lack of assumptions and other guidelines means I have no idea what you want to see in response, which might be any of the following;

a) you really do have a shitty product team and are actually looking for ideas. Some companies actually have no headcount at all. It sounds crappy and it is; but you might as well be aware that some companies are doing it.
b) you want to know if I care about your product even before coming onboard. Why does that matter? If I'm a great candidate I'll care as soon as I am onboard, but let's be clear; I'm approaching you to earn money, and that's why I'll care. Not kudos (unless maybe, you're Google and I'm fresh out of MIT).
c) You want to see that I know about Product Management, in which case the answer is that I wouldn't change your products at all. I'd start by listening a lot, and asking questions. Of you, of your customers, of your partners, of your industry analysts, of your fans, and so on.
d) your recruiters really don't know what they're doing. In which case you're just going to get random candidates from prior target companies you've communicated to those recruiters. I suggest this might not be the best way for you to get fresh perspectives and broaden your base of potential A-player candidates.

So which one of these 4 (and possibly more) are you then? Meaning, what sodding answer do you want to see? The answer I think you're going to get is that you'll screen out really good potential candidates on a weak basis. If you're flooded with candidates that might just be ok, but I suspect you can do better.

Well those are just some things I thought of. What am I looking for when I interview people? I'm looking for a personality fit, and some indication of a passion for getting things done. I should know about your background before then. As Jamie Zawinski said of success at Netscape - they had it because they found people that were happy with this statment, "you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products." and I want to find those kinds of people (regardless of company/industry/role). Read more about Jamie over at Joel Spolsky's blog.

I'd love to hear your comments.