Hard conversations, hard interviews…
By: New Work Spain
Tags: Recruitment, Tech, Software Development, Technology, Engineering

When I first started as a recruiter, one of my worst fears was doing interviews. At that time, I had a “mental contradictory”: Why am I not enjoying interviews if they are one of the best parts of my job as a recruiter? Meeting new people, explaining our projects to them… what’s wrong with me!

Finally, I realized what was happening to me. I didn’t know how to deal with interviews when a candidate was shy, not too talkative, rude or if I could see that he or she wasn’t honest.

After some years of experience and, what’s more important, after learning from different colleagues, I’ve acquired some techniques that help to make these conversations more fluent and in case it’s not possible (it can happen), feel confident to finish the interview with some dignity hahaha.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Let me share these tips with you!

When we do Competency-based interviews, it usually means that we have already met the candidate in a shorter first interview, those we use to screen candidates and check there aren’t red flags (required language level, salary according to the range we can offer, career expectations…). After this short interview, we have an idea of how this person could be so we can prepare the interview specifically for each candidate. However, we have to be careful to avoid prejudices.

Shy Person

It is common that these candidates normally answer with yes/no answers or with short sentences. First of all, we should try to find out, why this person is giving us such short answers.

There can be several possibilities: shyness, nervousness, she or he is not a talkative person… and this would be okay. Try to break the ice with this person, make them feel comfortable by dialoguing, not only asking structured questions! … If those are the reasons for their lack of speech, they will talk a little bit more. It usually happens that when these professionals are in a good environment and can be themselves, they become more confident.

Chatterbox

On the contrary, we can meet the opposite personality. Someone that never stops talking! Bla bla bla bla bla bla… and you don’t know how to interrupt this person. Has it ever happened to you? “I just wanted to know when the developer started to code in Kotlin and now I know how many brothers the professional has!” Hahaha!

When you want to clarify something or ask other questions because you already know what you need about a specific topic you wanted to check, don’t be afraid and interrupt them. Always with absolute respect. You can use sentences like… “Sorry for interrupting you, but I wanted to clarify what you said about…” or “Excuse me, before moving to whatever, I wanted to know about whatever…” The interview should be a dialogue, a conversation… the communication is reciprocal. I like these profiles as they are usually very enthusiastic about what they do. We only need to know how to get all the information we need, in time.

Critic/sceptic person

These professionals have the feeling they are being questioned all the time. They will probably adopt a defensive attitude and posture, and they will counter-question you.

In my opinion, these are one of the most difficult interviews as I don’t feel comfortable when I see they feel attacked. What can work is being honest and try to calm them down explaining them that it’s our way to know them better and check if both parties (he/she and the company) can work comfortably together. We want them to feel good if they join our teams. Turn the interview into a conversation instead of something that looks very structured so they can feel it is a dialogue. Make some jokes to distend the moment.

Show-off

When we think of a Show-off person, maybe we think of someone very senior but… don’t take things for granted. I’ve seen very junior developers so, so presumptuous… This kind of people think they are THE experts in their subject and that others are less experienced. In those cases, be brave and let them know that our teams are experts too and the decisions are made taking into account different opinions (also from junior developers…).

Observe their reaction, if they disagree or they explain they enjoy working on their own because it is easier and they don’t feel comfortable discussing with other experts, it’s possible that these professionals won’t fit in our culture (at least in my company). If you need someone to work on his/her own, this professional would be perfect for your position!

***

For all the interviews, it doesn’t matter what kind of professional we have opposite us (or on the other side of our screen), a very useful technique is the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result). It helps the candidate to describe a concrete situation that allows us to find out about specific competences you want to check (teamwork, feedback acceptance, etc.). It is very important to ask about concrete and past examples so you can get an idea about how they perform in different moments. Take a look at the different steps , from general to more concrete:

SITUATION: start asking them to describe a specific situation. Example: Can you give an example of a situation when you made a big error at work?

TASK: Once you know the situation, ask them what their responsibility was at that moment or the tasks they were doing. Sometimes when they explain the situation, they also explain what their mistake was. If that’s the case, there’s no need to ask it again (use your Active listening skills). Example: What did you have to do? What‘s your responsibility? What was your goal?

ACTION: Ask them to specify exactly what they did when they faced that situation. It can happen that they describe what the team did. In that moment, ask them what they did as an individual. We want to “imagine” them in action! What their role was in that situation. Example: When you saw that the webpage broke, what did you do?

RESULT: We want to know how everything turned out. If the decisions of the professional were useful, if not… In any case, a bad result means that the professional did it wrongly. Sometimes, a situation couldn’t be solved due to different external factors, although our candidate made all the effort she/he could. Example: Was the webpage fixed? How did everything end?

With this technique, we can go further in depth about how they acted in different moments, which can be similar to some situations that person could experience in our company in case they join any of our teams and therefore see if they are a cultural fit.

In conclusion, it’s not always easy to do a good interview. But, if we have some tools and techniques, we can improve the quality of our interviews and in consequence, the quality of the information we get from them and advise the hiring manager to make a proper decision.