In the last fifteen years, I have conducted thousands of interviews for a variety of positions and seniority levels. For a while, I was following the conventional approach of using scripted questions that tapped into candidates’ ‘soft skills,’ such as ‘Can you talk about a time when there was a disagreement with another team?’ While it’s reasonable to follow a mainstream interview process for junior-level positions, a few years ago I realized that for senior positions (both in the IC track and the organizational leadership track), a traditional interview that elicits conventional answers and paints a rosy picture of reality does not truly help us understand the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, a common question in many behavioral or leadership interviews is about escalation. Almost all candidates have prepared a polished story about how they handled an escalation flawlessly, following step-by-step instructions from a framework like STAR. They describe how they avoid conflict resolution issues by empathizing with the other party and bringing different perspectives to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, as senior leaders in any organization, we know that we deal with conflict and escalation regularly, and many long-standing conflicts don’t fit into the textbook model of conflict resolution through simple empathy, situation, task, etc. As a result, a few years ago, I began taking a different approach, one that ‘pushes’ candidates outside the norm. I started reversing the questions and exploring areas that are often uncomfortable to discuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For instance, I now ask:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, answering these questions can be uncomfortable and feels like walking a fine line. Admitting to being wrong or making mistakes is not easy especially in interview setup. However, the details in their responses and their ability to accept their mistakes reveal a lot about a candidate\u2019s self-reflection, character, and capacity for self-improvement\u2014qualities that are far more important in senior leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the last fifteen years, I have conducted thousands of interviews for a variety of positions and seniority levels. For a while, I was following the conventional approach of using scripted questions that tapped into candidates’ ‘soft skills,’ such as ‘Can you talk about a time when there was a disagreement with another team?’ While … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firooz.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}