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I’ve held positions at several firms where I needed to make hiring decisions. These include Square (Block), Weebly, and FutureFund, free fundraising platform for the K-12 school groups I founded. All of those firms require talent with specialized skills and experience, but you is likely to be surprised at how few questions I ask during interviews.
In fact, after interviewing over 2,000 candidates for a number of positions throughout my profession, I’ve learned that there are only two questions that basically matter. And if you hearken to the answers, they’ll inform you every thing it’s essential to know about whether to rent the one who’s answering them.
Here’s what they are and why.
“What have you been working on lately?”
This could appear too open, but that is the point. You allow people to maintain their answers in check when you are too specific in your questions. But when you ask a query like that, their thoughts go places you didn’t direct them to.
Most people—especially in tech—have greater than one or two projects at any given time. Ask them what they’re working on, and they’ll have to narrow down all the potential answers they might give in the heat of the moment to inform you about the one that’s on their mind the most.
At this point, you will learn a lot about their real priorities.
But that is not all. Candidates may even surprise themselves. It’s not only that they have not had time to think about what the most diplomatic or satisfactory answer is—their subconscious priorities may not even align with what they’ve told themselves is most vital to convey.
Watch and listen fastidiously after this query is asked, and you’ll learn greater than just what kind of work your prospect is most interested in doing. You may additionally find out how self-aware they are of their very own interests, which might say a lot about their future reliability in your workplace.
The second query works in a similar way. But it might probably teach you much more.
“What do you want to do?”
If you’ve just finished asking a candidate what they’ve been working on, this query could appear redundant. You’ve already built a picture of their priorities based on the last answer they gave, so why ask?
Simple: You hearken to see how well their answers fit. If what the candidate desires to do is different from what they’ve done before, you know there’s something they don’t like or something they’re trying to vary.
This helps you understand why they left their previous job, what they are looking for and what they expect from it. This is much more informative than asking “why are you leaving” which can probably make them just lie.
Closing the interview
These two questions also provide you with all the ammunition it’s essential to lock down the candidate you must hire. One candidate told me that they were leaving their previous job because of their work-life balance. Did I promise them a higher work-life balance if they got here to work for me?
While I used to be fairly certain I could provide exactly that, there was no must state and offer it explicitly—which might have forced me to enter the negotiation from a position of no power. Instead, I simply steered the conversation to my daughter’s softball games and casually mentioned that I had never missed one.
The candidate read between the lines and drew conclusions based on that.
Listening is the most vital skill you possibly can develop as an interviewer, and if your candidates are priceless, they are going to listen as attentively as you answer their questions. So remember: don’t treat people the way you must be treated; treat them the way they ought to be treated.
Presenting someone with the idea of coming to work for you is like selling them a house. They must give you the chance to assume themselves living and thriving in it. That’s why it’s essential to tell them a good story and then give them the tools to maintain writing it.
The interview is the starting of the story. If you listen fastidiously, they are going to show you exactly where they need it to go. From there, it’s a easy matter of selecting whether or not that is the story you must help them tell.
Related: Are You Really Listening? 7 Barriers to Effective Listening