Interview Questions

"You're ambitious, ruthless and immoral, every team needs someone like you!", D.I. Banks (PBS)

INTRODUCTION

Over my career as a manager I must have interviewed hundreds of candidates. I'm glad to have made a difference in people's careers to all those who successfully landed jobs in the organizations I worked for. Occasionally I've been asked to provide interview questions to other managers, or I've been asked what general questions do I use at a candidate interview.

Most of the roles I've posted have been technical. Either for software developers, business and technical support analysts. For really in-depth technical interviews, such as development roles, I've had a developer also interview the candidate to get a better sense of technical competence. As well, I prefer to have someone else on my staff to attend the interview for two reasons; their own development and an opportunity to explore the candidate's abilities from their own experience and perspective. I believe we don't know as much as we think we know, we're always learning.

Below are some of the interview questions I've had and what I am looking for in answers and why. As well, some of the things you can ask a candidate and some of the things you cannot. Also, some of the red flags that have come up during my interviews that you should watch out for. The items denoted with + means this is an appropriate answer, whereas the - denotes a not so great answer. I've included some of the odd responses I've heard over the years.

Make sure you have a way to score each interview and take notes, on what you liked and didn't like. Allot 10 minutes after each interview to take your notes while the memory is still fresh. After eight interviews you won't recall why you liked that first candidate best.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

How do you know when you're working too hard and how do you cope with that?
Why: you want to know if the candidate knows their limits and what do they do when they are overwhelmed. A good candidate realizes their limits and is aware that too much work leads to low performance (spread too thin) and burnout. As a strategy you want the candidate to off-load some of these activities to others on the team by way of manager consent. Or if that's not possible, then to re-prioritize what can be delivered given the resource constraint. Possible answers below:
- + "I feel stressed, anxious that I can't get all the tasks completed on schedule. I reach out to my manager to prioritize what can be done and what can be left behind or delegated to another team member".
- + "I know I am working too hard when my working days continuously overlap into my evening family time. I will reach out to my team to allocate some of the tasks to ease my workload. If that isn't feasible, then I escalate to my manager."
- - "I sweat lots and feel tired" (verbatim candidate response).
- - "I get stressed that I can't complete everything on time. I lose sleep over this. I put in extra hours to get it done."
Tell me how you go about learning new skills?
Why: you want to know how the candidate learns. Are they an experiential learner, a hands-on person, do they learn better in a formal classroom setting or do they take an interest in learning at all? In the technology field, things change quickly; new programming languages, algorithms, concepts, etc. Most people keep up to date with hands-on learning, perhaps they are learning Python or networking concepts on their own after hours. Others have taken university level courses to learn new skills. I had one fellow who was getting a certificate in Big Data Analytics and learning R, so he could improve career opportunities. You want people on staff that take an interest in developing themselves. I've worked with people in large organizations that have never taken a course or picked up a new skill since the day they graduated from university. Look for evidence that they are keeping up with learning new skills.

Are there any barriers to you working on our schedule?
Why: because you don't want to find out they are unavailable during the times you need them at work. You want to find out if there are an personal commitments that would prevent someone from working the regular hours. In most roles there is enough schedule flexibility that you can work around personal commitments. However, support roles require someone to be there when an issue occurs.

Some folks have regular medical appointments, religious obligations or child care issues that may keep them out of the office. You need to know if any of these could impact the needs of the role. I had someone undergoing mental health counseling every morning. They would be in the office by 10:00 AM. However, often there would be system issues earlier than that and I had to explain to the business that we had no coverage. The employee also did not want to divulge that they were having mental health issues, which came as a surprise. Medical issues are something that we have to make time for but has to be balanced with the needs of the job. Other employees had religious commitments every Friday afternoon, another one was unavailable for an hour in the afternoon due to child care pickup commitments.

You can't ask in an interview about personal, religious or medical issues, but you can ask an open question about the time availability of the role and whether that would be an issue. Be sure to track that in the interview notes in case it becomes an issue when thy start the job. Most commitments can be accommodated due to flexible schedules; meetings can be moved, backup resurces can be found, etc.

Would it be an issue if you had to occasionally work after hours or weekends?
In some jobs, after hours and occasional weekend work is required. If you are deploying software or managing application upgrades, chances are you're doing it after hours. Application updates are deployed and tested after hours when the users have gone home. Larger application deployments are often done on long weekends due to the time required to back-out and restore the initial application if needed. This means some of those long weekends are not available as leisure time.

One candidate I interviewed could not work weekends due to his son's hockey practice. Another candidate cherished their personal time, did not want after hours work and declined the role. If you expect people to work after hours you have to set that expectation up-front during the interview.

Why do you want to work here?
This is a very open question and you want to hear how the candidate responds. Below are some of the responses I've heard.
- + My friend also works at this company and he mentioned the culture was great. The opportunity to get involved in large projects is great! I hear the company also invests heavily in employee training. I'm quite excited about the opportunity.
- + I looked at the company website, understand the business and products. The GlassDoor feedback from employees paints a very positive picture of the company's management. Employees seem to be happy working here, further, the role matches my skills perfectly. I could be a great asset here.
- + I see this as an opportunity to take on more challenging work and improve my leadership skills.
- - The pay is better than my current employer
- - I'd love to work here. There are a lot of hot girls! Note: yes, I really had this response from a candidate. It should raise concerns that this could one day develop into a HR issue.
What does a typical work day look like for you?
Why: you want to know the level of responsibility this person has. Do they do help desk work or does their current role mean reaching out to several other people to coordinate work. Or do they spend any time managing people? I had one candidate applying for a Business Analyst position only to realize they spent their whole day attending to technical help desk calls, with no business requirements experience. If you are hiring for a position that requires soft skills, then you need to know if they have a people facing role, how well do they do it, how do they handle barriers and setbacks when peers don't agree with them?

How about role variety, do their days look the same every day or do they have a wide variety of duties on a daily basis? High variety of activities usually is indicative of a candidate managing a complex role; someone who could be adaptive to changing role demands.

What was your role on the project?
Why: you want to know how much responsibility they really had on the project. What was their real level of participation and influence on a project beyond what's noted in the resume. This question was actually posed by one of my staff to a candidate and I was surprised to find out that although the candidate's resume portrayed them as a major player on the project, in questioning, it was noted that they only played a small peripheral role. Be sure to question project participation and don't assume what's written is reality.

Likewise, I've had some excellent candidates who have expressed themselves very clearly on their project participation and how they influenced a positive outcome. I've also had some great candidates who have managed projects and have been forthcoming about obstacles and frustrations they've experienced. The honesty was appreciated. Painting a scene of what they did that worked and strategies they took that failed, was welcome. It was a more honest approach.

Other Questions I ask:

What will be your own challenges stepping into this role?
What would you say you do best in your work? What are you proud of?
What is your communication preference? (e-mail, face to face, etc. how do you prefer to communicate with people)
What professional accomplishment do you feel most proud of?
What behaviors/qualities are you brining into this role that you see as a benefit to the role?
Tell me about your hobbies. (if they own a PC what do they do with it? Facebook or explore new programming languages, networks or technical concepts? I actually had a couple of candidates that didn't own a personal computer!)
If they belong to IEEE, ACM or local PMI chapter – ask why they joined (to network for job finding or to actually learn from the experience of others)

We all have challenges and work doesn't always go our way. It's how we cope and correct that makes the difference. Failure is normal and should not be penalized. It's how we learn best. Otherwise we have a people who are unwilling to make mistakes or take calculated risks. These behaviours can paralyze organizations into ineffectiveness. "Find me a neck I can choke" (in the words of a former VP) does not promote a conducive working culture.

Questions that Everyone Asks

Most interviews all start the same way. There are always the same behavioural questions everyone asks. Every smart candidate should prepare for these.

Tell me about yourself?
My advice, give yourself 5 minutes to talk about your recent accomplishments in recent roles. Why you chose this profession and why you've decided to move on. Good reasons are more challenging positions, the need for developing new skills, perhaps an opportunity to lead a team and make a difference in people's lives. Don't talk about all your jobs, just the most recent ones. Time-box yourself.

Interviewers are looking for information about your experience and how eloquently you can communicate that information. Interviews are stressful, show that you can be in control of stress by remaining calm and speaking clearly and slowly; nerves tend to make us talk faster. Take a deep breath, smile and slow down. I've had a few candidates dripping in sweat from the stress they put themselves under.

Tell me about a time where you had a significant challenge and how you overcame it. Interviewers are often looking for stories on a difficult situation you faced and how you overcame that. It doesn't have to be a long story, but it has to be a story that shows how you made a difference and what strategies you used to overcome a difficult problem. It's what you did and what was the outcome.

What would you say are your strengths that make you a fit for this role?
Hope you've prepared for this type of question. How do you plan to fir into this role and what differentiating characteristics do you bring to the tables over the other candidates. Have a good story.

What do you perceive are some of your weaknesses and how do you compensate for those?
Everyone has behaviours, skills and personal aspects they could improve upon. It's a fallacy to think that you can reply that you have no weaknesses. It may be a skill gap; you're interviewing for a development role that requires knowledge of the Sparc language, which you don't have, but you can learn because you know Java. Perhaps you spend too much time focused on your work and as a development goal you're working on is taking the time to get to know your peers. One weakness a candidate explained to me was that he doesn't always respect his limits, he worked long hours and that often led to burnout. It's something he was working on to lead a more balanced life.

Questions you can ask

Anything job related you can ask questions on. Previous roles, education, experience, etc.

One question I always enjoyed asking was "Why did you pick this field of study?". It's not a question that determines the eligibility for the role, but more of a curiosity. I was always amazed to hear the many times candidates would say that their parent or relative picked the same field of study. One trend that I noticed was that university educated parents often have university educated children and sometimes even in the same field as theirs. Not always the case, but a high correlation.

Questions you cannot ask

Religion, health, personal issues such as marital status, relationships, ethnicity, how many children they have, etc. Although my experience has been that for certain roles, the interviewer may ask in a roundabout way about family. At times it may also slip that the candidate is married and has children. No harm done if the candidate brings it up first.

As an example, many years ago I interviewed for a startup. The job was going to be very time demanding. The interviewer asked if I had children. I responded that I did. This is normally a question no one asks. If you're working for a large regulated organization you could be hearing from HR if the candidate calls you out. However, the interviewer knew, and I knew, the time commitment required for this position left no time for children. I didn't get the job. We both understood the requirements and accepted that I was not a fit for this company. The startup folded a couple of years later.

Concluding the Interview

Thank the candidate for attending and spending the time to chat about their interest in the position. Be sure to give a time line by when your organization will reply with a decision.

Make the time to write you impressions of the candidate. Weaknesses and strengths for the role interviewed, would they be a good fit and what do they bring over other candidates. What differentiates this candidate over others. Ideally, you have established criteria and scored the candidate on how they match them. If you brought someone else into the interview, ask them how they scored the candidate. Compare results and discuss where you see differences in scores and why. Listen to the other attendee's feedback on the candidate.

As a courtesy, follow-up with the candidate by e-mail and thank them for attending. Give them a date by when you will get back to them for next steps if you have not done so verbally. There is nothing worse than being ghosted (sadly this is too common, even for senior management roles). It does not reflect well on your organization if a candidate is left not knowing where they stand.
Remember that you are ambassadors for your organization; how you treat people reflects on the values and culture of your organization. At Scotia McLeod we had a lunch-time session with one of the firm's lawyers about professional behaviour. There was an expectation that we, as employees, live by the firm's high standards in every interaction; in or out of the office.
One more thing, keep the interview notes and any communication with the candidate for the next six months. In case the candidate feels they were discriminated against because they didn't get the job, it's useful to have the notes that outline your objective decision why the candidate didn't get an offer. If a discrimination case is raised against you, you need the evidence for your decision. I've never experienced this but I read this is a best practice.

Compiled on 03-10-2024 14:32:48

MANUEL DUARTE

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Interview Questions