Simple hiring: asking tough, direct questions is a faster and better way to hire
In an effort to reduce risk, and avoid conflict, companies are adding 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 rounds of interviews. But that approach also has risks and those risks have been underestimated.
One vice that I see among managers who are hiring is an unwillingness to ask tough follow-up questions. If you ask a question and there is any vagueness in the answer, you need to drill down until all vagueness is eliminated and you understand exactly what the person knows. Follow up on what's said, but also follow up on what is not said.
Here’s a real-life example. I asked a recent applicant (for a fullstack software job, where we were hoping to hire a novice-to-mid-level engineer):
Me: How would you improve a situation where a web page is loading slowly and you suspect the problem is related to the database?
Applicant: Well, I’d start by checking the HTML, is it correctly done, and then the CSS, is there any redundancy? And then the Javascript, is it correctly written, is it minified? Can we speed that up at all?
Me: Okay, great, that’s a good start, but what else? If the problem is not on the frontend, then what?
Applicant: Uh, well, then, I guess I need to look at the backend database model code. Is my database model code concise?
Me: Okay, great, that’s a good start, but what else?
Applicant: Uh, what else? Well, uh, we really need to look at that database code. Is the model bloated? Can we slim it down?
Me: Yes, okay, you basically said that already, anything else?
Applicant: Uh, well … uh, check the HTML and the CSS and the Javascript and then, uh … API calls … uh ... the model code, make sure that is cleaned up.
Me: Yes, okay, but you said all of that already, anything else?
Applicant: Uh … well … the model code … and uh …
Me: Have you ever worked directly with a database?
Applicant: Uh … not much?
Me: If you get unexpected results from your model code, do you know how to debug the query?
Applicant: Uh … I guess I could … not really.
Me: Do you know what a Foreign Data Wrapper is in Postgres?
Applicant: Uh … no?
Me: Have you ever looked at the “slow query” log?
Applicant: Uh … no?
Me: Do you know how to run EXPLAIN or ANALYSIS?
Applicant: Well … no.
Me: Have you ever written SQL by hand?
Applicant: Uh … no.
Me: Are you aware of any differences in dialect between the SQL of MySQL and the SQL of PostGres?
Applicant: Uh … no.
Basically, they were somewhere between a novice level and a mid-level engineer, so they knew the frontend reasonably well, but they didn’t know a thing about databases. Which was okay, because that was what we were looking for. We hired them and they turned out to be great in some areas, and they were eager to learn about the things they didn't already know.
The crucial thing is that I kept asking questions until I was certain I knew what they knew, and also what they did not know. Sometimes it can feel aggressive, asking the same question over and over, which can leave either you or them feeling uncomfortable. But you will never be any good at interviewing people until you learn how to tolerate uncomfortable moments.
Actually, let me repeat that for emphasis:
You will never be any good at interviewing people until you learn how to tolerate uncomfortable moments.
I once shared the above story on Twitter and someone offered this criticism: “You were basically playing a game of ‘Guess what I’m thinking right now’ with them.” But to be clear, the candidate didn’t lose points because they didn’t know the answer to some of my questions. I often hire novices who do not know much. I was simply trying to figure out what they knew, and what they didn’t, as fast as possible. And a series of direct questions is the fastest way to figure that out.
Someone else on Twitter said, “There is no way I would tolerate your machine-gun attack with all those questions. I would work at any other place, but not with you.” Which is great. They’ve filtered themselves out. Apparently they’d rather go to those companies that use a passive-aggressive 8 round process to slowly discover what I manage to discover in 15 minutes. If that person prefers that style, that’s great, they can go work at that other company. If they don’t like my hiring process, they also won’t like the direct, honest, transparent, blunt, but always respectful, style with which I run my teams. It is best that they work elsewhere.
You might ask, “But isn’t this why we give written tests? To ask exactly these kinds of questions?” Yes, but when you give someone a written test, especially an online test, you won’t see where they pause, where they struggle, or where they need to look something up, and so you won’t know where to ask follow-up questions. Asking these questions in person allows you to focus your questions on the areas where they are struggling, so you can figure out exactly where the limits of their knowledge are.
Many managers, when they hire, don’t ask tough questions either because they lack experience hiring, or because they are afraid. Thankfully, both of these shortcomings can be overcome with practice. When you make hires, you will get better and better as time goes by. Hopefully, you can also find ways to gain experience at this before you are the one making the decisions. Early in your career, you can and should ask to sit in on interviews, so you can learn more about the hiring process from the manager’s point of view.
I’ve been at companies where they put candidates through 5 or 6, or even 7 or 8, rounds of interviews. There are several problems with such a long hiring process:
Quality. The best candidates won’t put up with such a long process, so they go elsewhere, unless you happen to be the company that pays the highest salaries in the industry (are you?).
Disrespect. Long hiring processes are disrespectful to the candidate, who really just wants a yes or no, so they can either get ready to work with you or so they can concentrate their effort on getting a job elsewhere. Giving a fast answer is a sign that you respect the candidate’s time.
Cowardice. Why does the hiring manager want multiple other employees to interview the possible candidate? Mostly because the hiring manager doesn't want the responsibility of saying yes or no. Especially if the hired candidate then turns out to suck, the hiring manager doesn’t want to take the blame. But this cowardice suggests much bigger problems in your organization. Are your managers cowardly in other ways?
Homogeneity. If 8 people do interviews, and they all have a veto over who gets hired, then the people who get hired will be whoever manages to survive 8 people’s conflicting ideas about what makes the ideal candidate. Those hired will not be the best, but rather they will be those who do a best at conforming to the broadest positive stereotypes.
Bias. If 8 people do interviews, and they all have a veto over who gets hired, then bias gets hidden. If any one of those 8 have a strong bias against a race or religion, their bias is hidden in the group decision. By contrast, if one person is in charge of hiring, and they have a clear bias, at least it is easy to see who is responsible for the bias in hiring.
Speed. If your managers know that your company is comfortable with a slow and complex hiring process, it sends the signal that your company might be comfortable with slow and complex processes in other things. And so you end up with your whole company being slow and complex.
Waste. Often the end result of a long process is the same as the end result of a short process. But the time you invest in hiring is multiplied per candidate per rounds of interviews. If you’re going to interview 7 candidates and put each of them through 2 rounds of interviews, then you are facing a total of 14 rounds of interviews to make the hire. But if you put them each through 8 rounds of interviews, then you are facing a total of 56 rounds of interviews to make the hire. The difference between 56 versus 14 rounds? If each round of interviews takes 1 hour, then you are talking about investing an extra 42 hours to make this 1 hire. Is it worth it? Is the quality of your hires raised by such an extent that the extra 42 hours of work is justified? If you have to hire 20 people, can you afford to invest the extra 42 hours into each of those 20 hires? Because at that point you’re talking about an extra 840 hours. Put differently, a simpler hiring process can save you 24 weeks of full time work.
It all comes down to this:
If you can tolerate some uncomfortable moments, asking aggressive follow-up questions, removing all doubts about what a candidate knows, then you can develop a simpler hiring process.
And a simpler hiring process has many, many benefits.
So ask yourself, can you keep your hiring process to just 1 or 2 rounds? Much of this depends on you developing a style that is direct, honest, transparent, blunt, forceful, but always respectful.
We will continue to explore this style in future articles.