Stop Throwing Darts! (No More Guessing...)

I recently spent two days doing non-stop interviewing coaching and I was blown away by two realizations:

1. New interviewers are nervous and almost always ramble in their question-asking, inadvertently including words in their question they did not intend. This skews how the candidate hears the question and, as a result, distorts the candidate's answer. I've covered this topic recently in the blog about segues.
2. The other pattern, and the one we'll discuss today, is that of "dart throwing." This is where you ask super specific follow-up questions in attempt to hit the bullseye of a candidate's story (i.e. get to the main and best data).

I want to make 3 potentially controversial claims regarding this practice:

1. You shouldn't be doing it very often.
2. You're probably doing it more than you realize.
3. There is a simpler and more enjoyable (and more effective!) way to dig into stories in most cases.

Let's start with an example: 

• Interviewer: "What was your proudest accomplishment at [XYZ Startup]?"
• Candidate: "I led a 4-person team to solve a difficult analytical problem that our banking client was facing. Their data was spread across several systems, and we managed to integrate all of it into a single view."

At this point, here are the types of questions I often saw from the interviewer trainees:

• "How fast did the team complete the project?"
• "How much help did you get from the organization"
• "What was the biggest obstacle you overcame in doing this?"

Notice that all three of these follow-up questions contain assumptions. The first assumes that the speed of project completion is what's noteworthy about this story. The second implies that the leanness of execution is what matters. And the third—while slightly less leading in terms of content—still nevertheless suggests that the impressive part of the story must be in the overcoming of something.

These are all guesses. You are basically throwing darts in the dark. And, unless you happen to be an expert in the subject matter of the story, it's unlikely that you are going to guess correctly. Instead you are likely to waste time having the candidate answer your overly-specific question and may never hear what made the story exception in the first place. (Very few candidates will push back against your question—they will answer it.)

Fortunately, there is a solution. Consider the following options for follow-up questions:

• "What are you proudest of here?"
• "What was most impressive to your boss [or the client]"?
• "Of all the things you did here, what moved the needle the most?"
• or, the perennial "Tell me more" (especially appropriate given how early we are in the exchange).

None of these presume anything except that there is something worth bragging about! Consider it your job to create a safe space for the candidate to brag about their personal impact (when discussing an accomplishment).

Of course, this does not mean that specific follow-up questions are never appropriate. You may be an expert in the relevant domain and know exactly what dimensions matter within a given story. Or a candidate may make a high-level claim ("We moved really fast") that requires you to ask specific questions to calibrate ("How long did it take?" ... "How did that compare to expectations?", etc.). 

In general, though, you should aim to keep things simple and let candidates guide you to where the value in a given story is. Do this with a combination of genuine rapport (fascination) and deft time management skills, and you'll begin to uncover far more relevant data.