Interviews and the lessons I have learned

Twelve years ago I went on a gap year adventure to a Summer Camp in America. I loved/hated it, but a year later, I’d forgotten about the parts I hated and became a passionate advocate for the Summer Camp experience and the value it can add to one’s life. As part of that, I was employed, in New Zealand and subsequently Australia, as an interviewer of potential camp counsellors wanting to go and work in the US at summer camps. Over the next ten years, I probably interviewed 400 young people between the ages of 17 and 30 who wanted the chance to broaden their life’s experience. Over the 400 interviews, I had some real standouts, and some real duds. Some applicants turned up and blew me away, made me embarrassed at how unimpressive I was and how little I had done. Some of them were absolute duds; I even had multiple applicants attempt to bring their mum into the interview with them. I’ve since moved away from the Camp Counsellor interviewing and moved into the “real world”, interviewing applicants for full time jobs that pay real bucks and reflect directly on me when I hire a star, and equally on me when I hire a dud. So far, I’ve been really successful in hiring great people so I thought I’d write a little something down about what I look for in interviews to make sure I hire the right people. It’s worth noting that until this point in my career I have only interviewed for customer facing IT roles and Camp Counsellors, although I am confident that the same principals apply no matter what the role. None of this is rocket science, although there is a certain element of being a “reader of people” involved in this process. If you can’t pick up on a bullshitter or you don’t understand your own work environment well enough, you’re destined to fail anyway.

Motivations:

One of the areas I always target for potential candidates are their motivations. Why do you actually want to work for us? I’ve had all sorts of answers over the years, some awesome, some horrible. Most candidates will go through some sort of rhetoric that they think I want to hear about the company being a good fit for them, in the Summer Camp scenario however, I used to get “Mum and Dad want me to go, they think it will be good for me” and “I heard the partying is good and the beer is cheap”. These type of answers would always flag with me straight away, if you butcher the motivation questions, then it’s a very long way back from there.

In the real world, I don’t want you to be desperate; “I need the money” “I heard that accounting companies pay well” is also no good. I don’t really care if that’s the case, I want you to show me that you understand what you’re getting into, and I want you to show me that is what you want to get into. I want you to tell me about your goals for the future and how you see this as a path along the road. Most of all, I want you to seem genuine and authentic So many times in interviews (those that know me know that being blunt is in my top five skills) I’ve stopped the interview and let the candidate know I want them stop sitting on the fence and spinning shit that I want to hear and actually be themselves. (That’s going to be the person I have to work with after all)

Allow for weaknesses:

This is always a challenging aspect, for any candidate. Often in an interview candidates get so caught up trying to sell themselves that they seem to forget they are human. I work in IT so perhaps it’s a little more blatant than other industries, but when I get people telling me how they are experts in every technology known to man, I switch off and basically close the interview down there. Likewise when I ask a scenario based question and the candidate has a rehearsed answer for something that vaguely (see: nothing at all similar) resembles what I just asked, and they go through their rehearsed answer.

Four bits of advice:

• Don’t be afraid to tell someone you don’t have any experience in a certain area. Honesty is the best and only answer.
• Sit back and listen – If you get a complex scenario based question, don’t be afraid to remain silent for a minute, listen to what the interviewer is asking and then tailor an appropriate relevant response. Listening to you say the same rehearsed answer for the third time in a slightly different way is not how I wanted to spend my day. By this point you’re probably wasting both my time and your time anyway.
• Plan for questions about your weaknesses just as much as you plan for questions about your strengths. Give me real answers that show me that you have enough humility and self-awareness to know your own weaknesses (and then why not spin it into a positive? Explain to me what you do to counter these known weaknesses)
• Tell a story, engage, take people along with you emotionally and set the scene, explain the why and how at the end. Practice storytelling.

Presentation:

Despite what other blogs say, and how much you think you should be working for a start-up in San Francisco where you can wear your Tsubi Jeans and a black tee every day as well as be provided with free yoga and chia seeds before work, chances are you’re not. You’re probably going for a job with a conservative Australian company that requires you to come in line. You know what that means don’t you?

WEAR A SUIT YOU CLOWN. I hear you say – this shouldn’t have applied in my Camp Counsellor interviewing days, and you’re right I wasn’t as passionate about it back then, but if you turned up with ripped jeans and a tee-shirt with a “hip with the kid’s” slogan on it, I still wasn’t impressed.  I want you to show me how important this job is to you! If you turn up and you’re the best dressed guy in the room, that’s awesome and well done. I can’t even tell you how often I get back from interviewing a candidate in my work life and the other interviewer that I work with will start the conversation with: “He didn’t wear a suit”. Think of a job interview as a complex game with points, around a base value of 0. If you come into an interview without proper business attire, personally, you’re now at negative 2 points and you’ve got to impress just to get to 0. This is a competition and you are already behind where the sharp bloke with the suit is starting from.

It is a numbers game:

Practice makes perfect, you need to be out there getting interviews. Don’t be disheartened and take it personally, you don’t know what the next opportunity is. My boss once told me that he went through an interview process. At the third interview he was interviewed by the CEO. Within two minutes, the CEO “You’re not the right guy for me” Instead of cracking he asked “Why?, help me understand so next time I am the guy”, Three years later, although never working together, the CEO is his mentor and the candidate (my boss) helps him sort out technology strategy in his firm.

TL;DR

Ultimately, as with life, what I look for and what I have had the most success with, is attempting to work with good people. People with high personal integrity, who you can throw in the most difficult of scenarios in your workplace, whether that be trying to get the 10 year olds to sleep after rope burn or getting the CEO of your multinational’s VPN working faster, and see them coming through it as a star.