Recruitment is one of the most important process for any team. It helps a team to grow, expand, learn and deliver. You need to make sure that the candidates your looking are a good team fit, meet all the requirements. It can also provide an excellent opportunity to meet amazing new people with fresh insights. For an interviewer, the process can become more fulfilling by interviewing through a combination of questions and ‘interviewing through conversation’. In this post, I would like to talk about how I use ‘conversation’ to explore their suitability and fit for a role.
Asking Questions Leading to Conversations
I have been through many interviews and been on both sides. I have been interviewed for many roles as well as interviewed candidates for roles.
When I went for my first interview for my very first job role, I remember rehearsing all the possible questions. I saw myself going through the same process when I conducted my first own interview. I had thought of all the questions that I should ask the candidate, all the scenarios to discuss and assess their problem solving skills.
After some odd 10 or 12 interviews, I found myself not enjoying the process. When I had followed a ‘Question Sheet’, although I was able to understand the candidate it did not help me to really identify strong candidates.
Not entirely sure when it happened, but at some point I decided to change my approach. I stopped asking too many questions and started to have more conversations. I found myself actually enjoying interviews more whilst also getting much more information from candidates which further helped me to make more solid decisions. Candidates became much more comfortable and relaxed.
Benefits of Interviewing through Conversation
I moved away the emphases of questions such as ‘Name some testing frameworks?’ or ‘What tests should you not automate?’. Instead, I started to trigger conversation with statements such as ‘Quality should be a forefront requirement’ or ‘Unstable tests should be removed’. I made an effort to not word my view’s as questions but instead make statements trying to provoke the candidate to speak up about the topic.
It may be easy to absorb the previous experience of a candidate and judge their technical abilities through a technical exam, it is however difficult to judge their principles and their soft skills. This is where conversations can add value.
Using conversations has helped me to learn about a candidate’s ability to communicate, explore what they did in their previous roles and estimate how they may add value to my team. But what about the value the candidate may gain by joining?
It is important for me to understand if the candidate would be happy, would they want to work with my team, would they enjoy and want to delivery the product and see it through. Would they willingly go through the extra mile.
What techniques do you use in your interviews? Let us know in the comments section below.
