I’m in a focus room to interview a candidate for an opening on my team. The table in the room is somehow at my knees. Not useful for taking notes. As I ask my questions, I keep thinking this candidate is a “good guy” and I’d like to work with someone like that. I checked myself - what happened to my standards?
When I started interviewing for Microsoft, I studied and practiced the formal process. Two proficiency areas to probe, one culture area. Make a definitive call - hire/no-hire. On the fence is a no-hire. Be able to explain your decisions with specific reasons, ie “seems smart’ isn’t a reason. We interviewed a lot, in some periods 20% of my time was spent prepping and interviewing. And humility aside, I was good at it.
At first, I learned a lot about how my colleagues thought about the Program Management discipline from participating in interview loops. More than just thought about - how they truly valued and measured a PM. From my fellow PMs, I learned the most from their design and conflict handling questions. For example, with a design question. did the candidate approach it from a customer or technical perspective? Could they pivot between the two? From non-PM disciplines, it was a mixed bag and I’d be prudent in incorporating their feedback. There was more to the PM role than “nice with good English”.
At one point, a manager of mine taught me how to structure a loop and what made for better or worse questions. For example, if you worked on PowerPoint, asking to design a new feature of PowerPoint wasn’t the best question since you may have a hidden bias. Likewise, a crossing the bridge puzzle question was only good at identifying people who had studied puzzle questions. What I found worked best, was one question based on the candidate’s actual experience and one hypothetical question. I tended to use hypothetical questions for design (i.e., design me a kids safe phone) and experiential questions for other areas.
I also tried to make the questions “fun” to counter the natural interview tension and my natural lack of funness. For college candidates, I’d often start the interview with a warm up question - what’s most important to you; the project, the people, the fame, or the money? Candidates would naturally say the project and the people; some with logical arguments of one or the other. No one would say money. I’d say, what if the people/project were the same but another company offered you 150% money? They’d still choose this job. 200%? Some candidates would admit they’d take the money, while most said it wasn’t really about the money. I (mostly) believed them. Microsoft is a great place to start a career and its brand resonates, especially with parents.
At one point, when I worked on what would become Bing, we were doing a ton of interviews. I was at the peak of my powers. I would get a definitive hire/no-hire recommendation for most candidates and I felt my recommendations carried a lot of weight. Then one candidate threw me for a loop. The interview was in an office on the first floor of Sigma building. It took me a while to find it, making me a bit on edge when I finally did. As I interviewed the candidate, I found her skills “just ok” with nothing that stood out as a real strength. That was a no-hire. As I wound down the interview, I asked her if she had any questions for me. She emphatically told me she really wanted the job, that she would work very hard. Just give her a chance. I thanked her for her time, and left the room. At first, her passion for the job swayed me. I went back and forth in my head. Eventually, I kept to first principles and decided to give her a no-hire. A decision I regret. I regret it because I came to believe her passion and attitude would have more than compensated for her “just ok” skills.
On a couple teams I was with, the final approver (AA in MS parlance) would gather the interviewers prior to their interview with the candidate. We’d do a quick roundtable on what we found and the final approver would settle on their approach and sometimes coach the interview team. I would be critical of some of the non-functional feedback - especially around motivations and cultural fit. I would push on concrete findings, yet years later I found myself wanting to hire someone because he was a “good guy”.
During the dotcom peak I interviewed at a startup. I was worried about my skill set, since I was more of a developer in a large IT organization than a hardcore developer at a startup. While I passed the skills question, what clinched me the job was when the last interviewer asked me what’s my best attribute. I said “I work hard and I’m cheap”.
Back to where I started, the focus room. I was confident the candidate could do the job. Did he have an outstanding skill? No. Were his skills better than other members of the team? Not really. Was he a good guy? Damn straight. And with that I made a hire decision against my principles and the candidate turned out to be one of the best hires I ever made.
Am I suggesting people follow their instincts when hiring? To consider non-functional attributes? Yes, with awareness and caution. Instincts will influence regardless (see the book Blink) and non-functional attributes do matter. For me, my instincts and non-functional preferences are acknowledged bias. A bias I learned to very carefully incorporate.
PS: In case it’s unclear, non-functional attributes I’m talking about are things like “work hard”, “ambitious”, “funny”, “presence”, “good person” and explicitly not things like race, orientation, family background, age, gender, etc.