Interpreting Mistakes: 4 Factors

A significant part of our training is getting interviewers psychologically comfortable with asking about a candidate's past mistakes. And giving them the tools to navigate the predictable dodges and decoys that candidates will throw at them. (We give everyone one "free pass" — candidates have been conditioned to reflexively respond this way from all the years of bad interviewing that they've been subjected to.)

But what do you do with this information? When you actually collect these mistake stories (and hear about weaknesses), you start getting a constellation of data about someone's professional flaws. Here is one way to think about interpreting it.

In judging the severity of a mistake, we generally recommend looking at 3 elements:

1. Relevance: How relevant is this weakness or mistake to the role you're hiring for? If it's a detail-oriented mistake in their past, it may not be as relevant for a high-level strategy role as it would be for a meticulous accounting position.
2. Magnitude: Did this mistake/weakness completely destroy the project or company, or was it relatively minor in the grand scheme of things? Another version of magnitude looks instead at how severe this mistake is relative to the population — e.g. someone was 2 months late on a project versus 2 weeks.
3. Recency: Did this occur in their last job, or 20 years ago? If you see a mistake from the distant past, you can often cross reference it against whether or not that same theme appears in any other stories from more recent jobs. In some cases the candidate may actually share an accomplishment (or other data point) that fairly convincingly shows this weakness is no longer present.

In addition to these, there is one final consideration, which is somewhat related to relevance: Coachability. How likely are you to be able to help the candidate overcome this weakness or pattern of mistakes? My default rule is that you should be baseline pessimistic on being able to "change people." That said, here are 3 elements that will affect how changeable someone is on a key dimension:

1. General openness and non-defensiveness (low ego, growth mindset, etc.). Candidates will vary in their openness to feedback, to advice from others, and in how they have grown over time. If one of their strengths is this type of self-awareness and improvement, you may have a better chance of helping them with this particular weakness.
2. Trait-specific changeability: Some traits are deep-seated and difficult to change. They are essentially "core" to who this person is and you are not in the position of doing life-altering therapy with your new team member. Other mistakes are caused by circumstances (such as lack of knowledge) that are much easier to remedy. [Interviewing side note: be wary of savvy interviewing candidates who try to use "I just didn't know that yet" as the main rationale for too many weaknesses/mistakes. Ask them for a mistake that wasn't simply because they didn't know any better.]
3. Your own resources and skills: How much time are you really willing to invest in helping this person to change on the relevant dimension (assuming they want to, and they can)? Be honest here. Perhaps you are legitimately an A+ mentor/coach on the relevant dimension. But if you're like most leaders, you're typically better off doubling down on helping your highest performers get even more leverage. Don't fool yourself during the moment of a hiring decision that you'll "figure it out later" because we all know how that story typically ends.

In summary, you'll feel confident hiring someone whose mistakes are not particularly relevant, recent, and large in magnitude. And in terms of hoping to change what weak points do remain during onboarding and beyond, you'll want to consider if the candidate wants to, if they can, and if you want to as well.