Mechanical Survival

What if the candidate were the interviewer?

It occurred to me while interviewing that I was more interested in the questions the candidate was asking than the answers they gave.

I know I’m dimly aware of this already, because I often try to structure at least one interview question so that the candidate has an opportunity to ask questions about the work. One way to do this is to advertise and then withhold information they need. For example, inviting them to consider a scenario where they are planning a platform migration, but not telling them up front whether or not the service in question is expected to stay online for the process, what the traffic is, etc etc. A good candidate will immediately start demanding details.

This is very narrow, though, and mostly it just proves competence within that particular scenario. Also, when you’re dealing with a made-up situation, there are limits to the questions you can answer, so there are also limits to the questions they can ask.

But what if we could reverse the whole thing? I’m the interviewer, I’m asking questions. What if they were the interviewer?

Role reversal

Thinking here about hiring into a position which would involve hiring responsibilities, would it be a terrible idea to simply reverse the roles? The candidate is handed the question sheet and they become the interviewer.

To be clear, this would not be a reverse interview in the sense of a would-be employee asking questions of the company. It would be the candidate interviewing me as though I were applying for the same job as them.

In this way we learn about how the candidate interviews, which will be part of their job: we’d learn about their manner when running meetings, their ability to step into a slightly strange situation with confidence (why not?), and probably a few things about their technical abilities and interests—not to mention their idea of what the job entails. There could be something quite compelling about the interviewer dropping all the armour of their position and opening their own competence up to questioning.

However, there are some serious drawbacks to this approach. Firstly, interviews are generally arranged so that the interviewee gets the most chance to speak. The hiring manager will do most of the talking, not the candidate.

Secondly, do you ask for a verdict at the end? A verdict is a great piece of information: a yes/no decision. If I’m the hiring manager, the candidate has multiple incentives to say I am good at my job — if they don’t, some other colleague (maybe on the panel!) disagreed with them when they hired me; I and the panel will be deciding their fate at this job irrespective of silly games like this, and face matters; even if I seem truly incompetent, I still have good claim to the benefit of the doubt, because I already work here.

Thirdly, is it fair to ask me whether I would want to hire someone who would hire me?

As hire As

There’s a popular saw that “As hire As, and Bs hire Cs”. I think the implication of this is supposed to be that people who are truly competent (As) hire others who are likewise competent, without regard to their own status, but less competent Bs prefer to hire unthreatening Cs.

If we believe this - and it appeals, the idea that competence and humility are inextricably linked! - then we could put our money where our mouth is and treat A-hiring behaviour as evidence of an A.

So instead of reversing the interview, we could ask candidates to re-interview existing staff, collect their scores in private, and evaluate whether we as leaders would like another person who values (as it might be) Lauras, Riteshes or Alexes more.

We have to assume that we as the hiring panel already have some idea who the As, Bs and Cs are in our company. (From experience, this is not unusual). They needn’t know that they are ranked like that when they take part in this process — but the interview panel will, and the panel can use that information to understand whether the candidate, however competent they are, does indeed have the right kind of heart and mind.

Is it extremely invidious to ask the candidate for feedback on colleagues? I instinctively recoil from this because it instrumentalises the panel’s opinions on colleagues, elevating e.g. “Alex isn’t doing that well” from a changeable opinion into a yardstick (“Alex is a B”) that we’ll use to judge the candidate. (Icky when it’s negative, quite good when it’s positive).

But I don’t believe it is bad to turn those opinions into determinations; in fact I would go further and say that it is necessary to try and do that in order to understand what’s going on in your teams anyway, and as a manager you should have confidence in your views on who you like having on your projects and who you don’t.

The colleagues could in turn give us feedback on the candidate’s style, the questions they asked, and how they behaved in a position of authority.

Does it have to be an interview?

My favourite interview experiences have been those where around the conversations I’ve got to sit down and work on something with a potential colleague. At the end of those processes those who had paired with the candidate were asked for their feedback.

You could equally well ask the candidate for their feedback. In fact, not asking for it is likely to leave a lot of useful information about the candidate on the table.

Conclusion

Can you learn about people by asking them questions? Up to a point. The questions they ask may well be more informative than their answers.

Interviews are a strange situation where peers gain ascendancy over each other, and they draw on a lot of interpersonal and technical skills. Putting a potential manager into the interviewer’s seat is a way to put them to the test. We see their moment-to-moment managing skills. We learn about their technical ability. And we learn about how precious they might be about their abilities.

Even if observed interviews go a bit far, as managers I think it’s worth asking ourselves that slightly sticky question of what we might be losing if we don’t ask candidates for feedback on our colleagues.

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#Management #Hiring