As a technical lead, a manager, a director, and a founder, I have interviewed and hired many people. I have made excellent hires, acceptable hires, and bad hires. Over the years I have organically built methods to help me validate the skill sets of people that I’m interviewing. I’ve also invested in my own learning around body language, so that I can better lead my teams and better explore the cultural fit of a potential employee. During an interview however, I have never had a framework that guides me along a consistent path to identifying the best teammates I can identify for my organization. Recently, my friend Jason Eichenholz, Co-founder LUMINAR gave me “Who” by ghSMART. The authors provide a remarkable take on the interview process, and I felt it was worth sharing with you.
To begin the book they make no bones about accepting a lack of clarity in who you hire. They have an exacting process that weeds out people who aren’t an absolutely perfect fit and helps you to spend your time most wisely on those who are a perfect fit. They call these people who are a perfect fit “A” players. They refer to those who are not a perfect fit as level B and level C players. They also discuss levels of performance when identifying A, B, and C players. They provide a framework that you can visualize in the shape of the letter A, and each stroke of the letter is a piece of your interviewing puzzle. The first stroke is “Source”, which provides a guide for bringing people in to your interviewing funnel. The second stroke is a “Scorecard”, which forces you to know exactly who you are looking for and the role you are trying to fill. The last stroke is “Select”, which guides you in sifting them down to the ones who are the best fit and high performers. There is also an extra stroke, “Sell” which gives you ways to convincing these A players to join your team.
To date, this is one of three patterns I am aware of in the interview process. The first is one that I have used most often, which is the organic approach I described earlier. It is usually a combination of a technically skilled person who is trained in the same domain of knowledge that is needed for the job, such as an engineer, an artist, an HR representative, etc… That person will assess the technical skill sets relevant to the position and whether this person can actually do the job. Then there is a manager or leader who is looking for cultural fit. They’ll be looking for indicators that this person is a good fit or a bad fit, asking historical questions on the relationships at work, looking for signs that this person may be hiding something, and looking for signs that this person would be someone wonderful to work with. That is all fairly objective, and it varies from interviewer to interviewer. Even the technical skill set assessment varies with the interviewer. Some people will have the candidate get onto a whiteboard and do some calculations, some coding tests, some system diagrams, etc. depending on the role. Some people will just discuss tools and see whether or not the interviewee understands the tools and the workflow. If it’s very creative, they often look at a portfolio.
The second method which I have seen is a very methodical approach used at Amazon. It’s very high-speed, and intense. They actually compare it to speed dating, because it goes by very quickly as they try to extract as much information as possible. Before you ever walk in the door you will have already written an essay or white paper, and you will have been coached by Amazon’s recruiter on how to deliver the maximum amount of information you can to the interviewing staff. They incorporate a method called STAR. It is an acronym to remind you to hit the highlights of any given Situation, the Task to be solved, the Actions you took, and the Results you achieved. The point is to be efficient in the information you deliver, and not to ramble so that they can get onto the next question and have more get more information from you by the end of the interview. It’s quite impressive, so I may write an article on that at some point.
But this “Who” method is more thorough in my opinion and is actually more friendly. You end up investing a lot more time with your candidates, so you have to be certain that you want to follow the method that the book recommends. It seems to be geared towards senior leadership roles, however the same methods can be applied to individual contributors and junior members. If you truly believe that hiring the right people is worth the investment time on the front end so that their tenure at your company is excellent, this is a great book to read.
I recently had the opportunity to experience this interview process first hand and see how it works in real life. It is quite friendly, and the book teaches you how to keep things on track with your interview, while getting through the very critical pieces of the knowledge gathering process, in order to understand your candidate. They also teach you how to propagate this methodology throughout your entire company as a way to ensure everyone is hiring the best candidates they can. If you are looking to add an excellent tool for your toolbox as a manager, leader or founder, I recommend you check this book out. And if you like it, I recommend you “pay it forward” by either writing your own book review, sharing mine, or purchasing some extra copies that you can give out as you see fit.
I am always on the lookout for a good book recommendation, especially if it has an audio version. Do you have a hiring book you would recommend? If so, please tell me about it below.