Requirements for job applicants generally fall into one of two categories: hard skills and soft skills. But there’s one more component, just as important as the previous two, and that’s the employee personality profile.
You’d think that it makes little difference how nice the people in your office are, as long as they have the right skills, can communicate with the team, and show good time management. But let’s look at this from a different angle. Ideally, an employee stays with one company for 3–5 years. He or she spends five days a week, eight to nine hours a day, interacting with other members of the team. This interaction has a major impact on the results of the work itself, so it’s important that the team is made up of honest, reliable and responsible people. It only takes one toxic person to poison the well, so good luck if you have several of them.
That’s why we look for more than just professional skills in our candidates: it’s important to us to work with like-minded people who share our values. We may turn down more applicants than other companies, but that’s because we are very thoughtful in assessing a candidate’s personal qualities.
So in this post, we decided to shed some light on our screening practices.
Test of integrity
Perhaps our most important requirement for candidates is honesty, because you can never build a normal relationship on deception. To make themselves look better, jobseekers often give false information on their CVs, claim other people’s achievements as their own during an interview, and present non-existing projects. The issue with that isn’t even the fact that their real skills are worse than they make them out to be – it’s their dishonesty. If a candidate lies from the very beginning, it’s only natural that this behaviour will continue in the workplace. This is why we try to understand how honest a person is as early as the applicant selection stage.
Truth or lie
Interviewers typically have a sample list of questions to assess a candidate’s qualities. We use one too, but to understand how honest a person is, we also ask clarifying questions.
Here’s an example: a person applying for an Android development job explains how he built a mobile app, but can’t show the final product. There’s nothing inherently weird about this: there may be some NDA conditions or the app could have already been removed from the store. We always assume that our applicants are telling the truth, but we also try to get as much information as possible. That’s why we then ask them to show us the prototype, and if that is not possible either, the terms of reference. The candidate may say that they’ll find the ToR and send them to us after the interview – and if they don’t follow through on this promise, we see it as a red flag.
Questionnaire
It’s a good idea to make a list of clarifying questions in advance. We’ve prepared 10 questions that can help you evaluate the previous experience of your candidates:
- Why did you decide to talk about this particular case?
- What part of the project were you responsible for?
- How did you interact with other stakeholders?
- What were the metrics before and after?
- How did you impact the bottom line?
- Why did you choose that particular solution and what was your thought process?
- Can you tell us how the project was implemented, step by step?
- What do you think of that solution now?
- Looking back, what would you do differently and why?
- Can you show us this case/prototype/ToR?
These questions will obviously vary depending on the exact position. Plus, you will almost certainly want to clarify additional details during the interview. Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions: ideally, you want to hire a specialist for the long term, so try to avoid buying a pig in a poke.
There is another other good method of assessing a candidate’s honesty. It's normal to feel nervous during a job interview. But if the interviewee gets angry, annoyed, defensive or passive aggressive when answering your questions, there’s clearly something wrong.
Talking about your exes
Besides honesty, there are other important criteria for evaluating interview candidates. To test their sense of responsibility, we ask them to do something that doesn’t require much time; for example, to find and send us one of the cases they mentioned during the interview. And then we see whether they remember what we asked them to do, when they’ll do it, and whether or not they will warn us if they can’t fulfil our request in the near future.
It’s very important to pay attention to what the candidate says about their previous employers. This rule actually applies to all exes, not only work-related ones :) If a person speaks poorly of them, perhaps they’re generally inclined to shift responsibility to others.
And vice versa – if the candidate is painting too rosy a picture of their work experience, they may be hiding something. In this case it makes sense to ask more questions about why he or she decided to leave their previous job.
Finally, we have another technique for finding like-minded people. Hard to say what exactly it indicates, but we know for certain that this is a fail-proof method. From the very first interview, we strive to create a safe, friendly environment and encourage positive dialogue. And if the person rides this wave and returns the kindness, that’s a very good sign for us.
A few words about bamboo
For us, the candidate’s personality profile is the most important metric. If an applicant fits the bill in terms of hard and soft skills, but has incompatible personality traits, we have to reject them, as they won’t fit in with the team. On the other hand, if we see that a person doesn’t have enough skills to get the job at the moment but their attitude aligns with our values, we try to stay in touch with them. And in the future – after they grow professionally, or if a more suitable role becomes available – we may invite them back for another interview.
It’s very difficult to find the right people, but it’s worth the effort when you finally do. Think of it like bamboo: at first the growth is barely noticeable as the tree develops its root system. But then its shoots grow so fast, you can practically watch the process in real time. The same goes for personnel – first you have to spend a lot of time building your dream team, and then you can watch them deliver amazing results.