My name is Alexis Sun. I am here with Joshi Ben-Gopoul. We work together. I'm here with him because I know most of his time he likes to spend meeting external candidates. I want to learn from him what his interview experience is for. Just for the first question, it's very simple. How many people have you interviewed so far Joshi? I don't keep track of it. If I were to speculate, probably close to 400. If I remember, I probably only interviewed 10 people. You could have delegated some of it. Why do you spend your time on it? Three reasons Alexis. Number one, I believe hiring is the most important decision that I would ever make. If I had the right people in the right roles, more than half of my job is done. So it's something that I would not delegate. Second, through these interview processes, I learn a lot about what is going on outside of my company, in the industry, other companies. Many times, these interview conversations sparse ideas within me. So that's been very helpful. Every person is unique and I'm genuinely curious about people. So I just enjoy meeting and learning about new people. I totally agree with you Joshi. When you prepare for your interviews, do you just kind of go with the flow or do you sit down and actually prepare for them? I have done both approaches and have come to realize that structured interviews where you prepare in advance gives better results. Nowadays, I sit down before the interview and look at four or five things a candidate must have to be good at that job. So then I write down a few questions that will help me gauge them on this criteria. I also realize sometimes that the memories cannot be fully relied during the interview process, especially when the candidates you meet maybe a part several weeks. So it's also important to record the answers so that you can do factual comparisons before making a decision. So I'm all for structured interview process. So when you interview and you meet the candidates, what do you look for them? What do you look for in a candidate? It depends on the role of course. As a ruler thumb, I look at the competency and even for senior roles, the fundamental competencies, I don't take them for granted. Then innovation is a key quality I typically look for. Another important area would be related to people. So leadership, collaboration, this would be the three buckets. When you hire these individuals, you're actually hiring them in a team. So you're building a team when you do that. How do you approach this? That's a very good question. I actually never thought about this for a very long time. Typically I would look at a role and I would think who is the best person for this role and just hire them. But while we do that, we are also building a team and how is the team dynamic shape up is something I started to think only recently after I was asked this question during a leadership assessment and I didn't have a good answer. Now I think about building teams with this framework. There are people who are predominantly thinkers, there are people who are predominantly doers and there are people who are predominantly connecting people which I call as connectors. I think it's good and important to have a balance of thinkers, doers and connectors in a team. Based on what you've had, what you've said so far, your very strategic assumes and your very process oriented. Have you ever made hiring mistakes following these processes? I'm now very process oriented and that's a key gap that I have. But I try to stick to some processes because they add value. In terms of hiring mistakes, I have made handful of hiring mistakes. It typically happens when I get positively biased by a candidate during an interview and then I ignore the warning signs that comes up in reference checks. If that has happened once or twice, then there are another group of candidates who are very good thinkers and impress me in the interviews because they're very good in articulating their thoughts but they may not be very strong in operations or execution. So I'm now careful especially when hiring people to join lean teams were operational strength is required. So what tips do you have for the candidates who come for interviews, Jushi? Maybe two. Firstly, give short answers. Human attention span is reducing. The key here is to be comfortable with silence. Silence is important for both sides to process information. The second one would be to show the interesting interviewer. I often realize when someone asks who are you as an individual, beyond your job description and experience, that's when the interviewer really gets engaged in that conversation. And you get to know the interviewer a lot better than what is depicted in his or her CV. So that's two tips I can think of right now. All those things are very easy to say about how to practice especially the silence part. For me personally, I think that's where I need more practice. Me too. So finally for you, Jushi, what is your favorite interview question? There are a few and probably I should not reveal them all but maybe I will say one. It could be teach me something that you think I should know. And I like this question because firstly the candidate need to think about the audience which in this case is me. So what is it that will interest me but at the same time I may not know. Second, they need to have sufficient depth to teach something. And third, they need to be able to structure their thoughts and communicate very well. Maybe in a form of storytelling or there should be a logical narrative behind it. So it helps to learn a lot of things about the candidate. And for me I always learn something new so that's a bonus. It's a plus right? The question itself is very simple but when I thought of it I couldn't really think of anything. It's nothing really popped in my head. That's probably something I need more practice on. It's true that after an interview we go home and then we realize, oh I could have said this, I could have said that. And that's why I think it's important to take time to think before you answer and there is where silence again plays an important role. I know of candidate who said can I think about it for a minute and that's perfectly fine. And some people structure their thoughts in a notebook and then they articulate it. Yeah. Another thing I learned today from you. I think Joshi today it was very valuable. I've learned a lot about interview and also interview process that I should be taking. And about you personally. It's been a while that we work together and it's just now that I've learned a lot. So for me it was very valuable and I hope it was valuable for me to you. Thank you Joshi. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you.