Ali’s Guide To Interviewing
What I believe an interviewer should look for and how to conduct interviews
I recently read this article on Medium and realized that Elon Musk and I have a very similar interview strategy. I believe I settled on this in 2016 and have been running with it for, well, a fairly large number of interviews. At least in the 100s. And thought I’d pen down how I conduct interviews. Partly, so I’d be able to provide a reference to someone that asks me. Mostly because the sadist in me can raise the bar my putting all the information out there.
The Socratic Method
So let’s start with the basic strategy underpinning my interview process. Use the Socratic method to get information out of this person. Just like how Socrates was able to bring out the limit of an individual’s knowledge the deeper you go the better idea you’ll have what they are capable of. During the entire process you must be ready to approach the person with genuine curiosity and learn from them. Your goal is to take them to the depth of their understanding, and see how they handle being pushed beyond that. I can assure you that in the 100s of interviews I’ve done, nobody has ever forced me to ingest oleander so empirical data shows it to be safe as long as the interview is remote.
A Story About Bill Gates
Since I’m name dropping someone every paragraph I wanted to share a story a senior engineer at Microsoft about his interactions with Bill Gates. What he described about Bill Gates was that if he came and talked to you about a problem your area of expertise. He would ask questions, genuinely learning from you asking about all areas of the problem you’re working on. And pretty soon he’d be asking you questions that you hadn’t thought of. And so in some ways he would gain a greater mastery of your area of expertise than you have yourself.
So please when I’m saying use the Socrates method, what I’m really saying is be Bill Gates. Although, granted I probably wouldn’t spend my time interviewing if I were Bill Gates.
The Interview Questions
Now let’s go back to our goal. We want to go very deep in something that the person considers their strength. The meaningful questions depend on what the person will say. But I have some seed questions that I use to get the conversation going.
Tell me why you’re interested in this position and why do you feel you’re a match for it?
This question is a good ice-breaker. Giving the person an opportunity to present themselves. Get their prepared pitch in. And also get a summary of the history straight from their mouth so I’d have an easier time contextualizing their resume. If there’s something I find interesting in their answer I will pursue it.
Tell me something you’re proud of?
The next question is where I expect to actually have a conversation. I may vary it a bit, a project you’re proud of. If they answer about something outside of work I’ll use that to learn about the candidate but repeat the question with work as a context. In the end this question is my go to question. ost likely I’ll pursue and ask for more details on their answer.
Tell me something you found challenging?
If I want to learn more about how they deal with adversity I’ll ask this question. Usually if you ask them what they’re proud of they’ll share how they react to adversity. But if they don’t I’ll ask them up front.
How do you compare option A with option B?
This is a type of question I make sure to include in my interview no matter what. Engineering is about making choices. Many times there will not be a clear cut answer but it’s important that you know how to weigh the pros and the cons of different options. Your abilities as an engineer, well any kind of knowledge worker, depend on assessing the information and reaching an appropriate option. When asking this question though, I make sure to ask it on a design choice they make. At times I will even have them lookup a new alternative that they are not familiar with and comparing it against the decision they made.
Show Don’t Tell
Okay, I’m going to ask a really really hard question here. Are you ready? Okay, here goes:
Q. Classify the following words as good or bad qualities to present to hard-working, arrogant, self-driven, close-minded, team player, lazy, dependable, stupid, fast learner.
A. Good: hard-working, self-driven, team player, dependable, fast learner. Bad: arrogant, close-minded, lazy, stupid.
Wow did you actually get it completely right. That’s really impressive. How did you know other than because it is obvious. When you’re interviewing someone any description they provide of who they are is fluff. You have to learn to disregard it. You should listen to what they described doing.
Do you want to see if they are an avid learner? Did they describe things they took the initiative to learn? Did they describe taking new approaches rather than existing approaches? Did they tell you about reaching out for help or asking questions about the bigger picture? Did they tell you about how they realized someone else’s idea was better and how they dropped their own i
Do you want to see if they are a team player? When their idea was dismissed how did they convince others of the merits? Did they collaborate with someone they disagreed with so the other idea gets accepted with only essential modifications?
You have to pay careful attention to everything that is said. More so than someone can themselves. Contextualize what that would mean, how it would impact others, what piece of information is being left unsaid, what would the questions be if I were in the same situation. I’m using many words to say, you need to have empathy with them putting yourself in their shoes. And by empathy I mean that in the strictest sense of feeling what they’re feeling from what they’re saying. Not that you have to like them, you just have to see the truth of them. If this were a conversation about how to build a better relationship I’d be talking about how to reflect that back to them. But they’re an interview candidate, you don’t need to have them like you. You may say something to have them open up more or to let them know that you get it and move on but you’re here for a purpose. Damn it, they’re right. I am Machiavellian.
The Devil In The Details
So when I talked about the questions, you need to get into detail. This was the key of the Socratic method. It is very easy to be fooled into thinking that the person answered your question using superficial statements that don’t give away any details. A lot of the times those statements are the same statements I want consultants to be able to make to customers. It’s the statements that I like to hear. And if I can’t get deeper than them I have to tell myself this person is a bull-sh*tter and don’t fall for it. But that is not the only sign. Another sign can be that you’re asking a bunch of questions trying to dig deeper and deeper and you keep on finding yourself asking similar questions. It’s not that any question has been answered incorrectly. It’s just that your actual curiosity is not satisfied. Which means either there is a poor communicator in the question or the person is not comfortable going into details.
Finally there is the part where you are left confused. It’s okay to hold this against the other person too. If you asked good questions, asked for details, and are still confused then again, either there is a poor communicator or they are leaving out essential pieces of information needed. Which again means it’s not a fit.
Time Is Of The Essence
Another thing I have to note is that time is of the essence. What you’re doing is difficult within the 20–40 minutes available to you for an interview. One thing I haven’t found the solution for is that some times I just have to be rude in the interest of time. A lot of people start rambling. And in that rambling they miss the point. The easiest thing I’ve really found is to just interrupt. And either bring them back to the point or ask my next question. If you have any other suggestions that are more respectful would love to hear them. But you are on a detailed fact finding mission. There isn’t enough time to lose control of the conversation.
On the other hand, if you’re a candidate. Please after answering a question give a pause so the other person has a chance. It’s supposed to be a conversation and rambling shows poor communication. And it stands out as an example of failing to understand customer needs. Also here’s another hint. Many people love to talk and have someone listen. You can make many interviewers think you’re brilliant if you give them the opportunity to talk.
What’s Important
As you’re going through these conversations it is important to focus on what is important. In my article “The Skills Gap Is A Lie — Part 3” I talked about the concept of durable vs perishable skills. And you should focus on looking for the durable skills. And not get distracted by the perishable skills. Having said that I have to add asterisk to that. When you’re looking for the durable skills, don’t lose out on great candidates because they are in bad environments. I’ve talked about a lot of things I tolerate from interview candidates that I would not tolerate from someone on my team. Because I understand sometimes great people in the wrong environment don’t get to flourish. And you have to be tolerant to that and try to look beyond where they are into where they would be in your environment.
This happens a lot with junior interview candidates when you ask them why did you do it a certain way. They’ll respond the architect made the decision. And while I would not find this an acceptable answer from any team member I accept I don’t fully know their work environment. So I would ask questions like, Were it your choice what would you have done? Did you share this opinion and got shut down? I get you were given an order but now I’m asking you, what would be your reasoning for doing it? At some point they have to prove that they have the underlying ability to change to the culture to our team but they are not discounted immediately. On the flip side, you have to work hard to ensure you build the right culture in your team to nourish the people and change their mindset after you bring them in.
Be Encouraging
An interview is a high stakes high stress environment. When you use the Socratic Method you push them outside their comfort zone. While you want your employees to not collapse under the slightest amount of stress this is a far higher stress environment than it needs to be. So it is important to be encouraging. Let them know that you’re asking hard questions and have an understanding that you’re asking hard questions. And will evaluate them accordingly. Unless you are interviewing for a position in a bomb defusal squad, you don’t need to see how someone performs under that kind of stress. So relieve them from it.
Coding Question
Most of the hiring I have to do is for developers. So I ask them to do a quick coding exercise. The question I ask is prefaced by this is going to be vague and I want you to have a conversation with me so we can make appropriate assumptions. I also want you to solve it like you would in real life, looking up anything you want in real-life. My ideal scenario for a question would be to gain a deep understanding of what they’ve worked on, and ask them to do something in a different way or add on a feature. I’m not smart enough to pull this off frequently, but it is something I do strive to do in interviews. No better way to ensure the question is fair than asking over things they know.
In asking them to code I am looking for a strong foundation for breaking problems down not for fancy techniques. I would want to be sure the code has:
- Iteration — This is the basic premise of why software exists. So we can do the same task repeatedly. And it is shocking how many people don’t get when they need to use a loop.
- Conditional — The code needs to have a conditional. I mean any problem worth solving will have some kind of a decision in it.
- Non-trivial Loop Control Flow — For some reason people struggle with loops that are more complicated that iterating over a list. For example I used to ask people to calculate prime numbers and people really struggled with creating the loops for that.
- Functions — This is getting into territory where you have given more time to coding. But writing a function demonstrates the ability to break a problem down
- Library — This again becomes can be depend on how much time is available but using a library shows the ability to read documentation.
In-Person Vs Online
I guess doing things online is all the rage now. Fortunately for me, almost all the interviews I’ve done have been online. So I think my tips work great under our new normal. We have a company policy to screenshot the interview because there are fraudulent candidates. So we turn camera on at least for that. But frequently we turn off the camera to save on bandwidth. I don’t know if seeing people’s face adds any real value rather than a perception of intimacy. It at least eliminates a source of unconscious bias. Also we take advantage of the fact that we’re sitting in front of a computer by saying well can you look this up and share your screen. So we can ask them to learn something new and witness how they learn.
I hope this advice is useful to you. It is mostly with a focus on the interviewer, and honestly as the interviewee you are mostly dependent on the interviewer. If you liked this article I would recommend reading my articles on resumes and skills gaps.
