[HN Gopher] How I build and run behavioral interviews
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How I build and run behavioral interviews
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-02-26 12:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.benkuhn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.benkuhn.net)
| paulsutter wrote:
| Strong recommend to use these techniques when interviewing.
|
| For example: employees from large companies may claim credit for
| substantial initiatives but when you drill in they had only a
| tangential involvement. They don't intend to mislead, thats just
| the language people speak inside of large companies, and
| behavioral interviewing can help translate that into more
| objective information.
| tines wrote:
| > To figure out whether they're real or BSing you, the best way
| is to get them to tell you a lot of details about the situation--
| the more you get them to tell you, the harder it will be to BS
| all the details.
|
| This is exactly the feature that allows people to distinguish a
| genuine recording from a faked one in Iain Banks' sci-fi series
| "The Culture"---it's impossible to fake a recording taken by a
| (machine) Mind because there's too much detail to fabricate.
| lamroger wrote:
| I've had a few of these interviews. Some do it well by showing
| genuine interest and maybe they have expertise in the area and
| it's fun chatting about the project. Other's see it more like
| cross examination or make it adversarial. I personally get
| nervous and tense up when I feel attacked. Maybe it's a good
| way to opt myself out of working in those environments.
| athoscouto wrote:
| This is spot on. Having shadowed my share of interviews, I've
| found that the attitude of the interviewer is the biggest
| factor in having a good interview experience.
|
| Making sure interviewers show genuine interest, and are open
| to different candidate background is one of the most
| difficult things to guarantee when you have many people
| interviewing.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| My personal experience has been that people dramatically
| underestimate how easy it is to bs and simultaneously
| overestimating their ability to tell if someone is bs'ing vs
| just being nervous/forgetful. Which leads to some hilariously
| poor outcomes...
| digging wrote:
| I've almost never been part of an interview so well thought-out,
| but I continue to hope to be. I find this is also helpful reading
| for candidates.
| riversflow wrote:
| From the examples section:
|
| > making their reports feel psychologically safe
|
| > ask how they thought their report felt after the tough convo
|
| > bad answer = not sure, or saying things in a non-supportive /
| non-generous way
|
| I wouldn't feel "psychologically safe" with someone who expects
| me to read minds. How can you _ever_ be sure about how others
| feel as a manager? I check in with my reports and their
| colleagues but I'm still never certain. Your reports don't want
| to be fired and as such every interaction you have with them is
| flavored with coercion.
|
| If I asked this question and they didn't say something to the
| effect of I'm not sure, that would be an enormous red flag to me
| that this person doesn't give others proper agency.
| sarchertech wrote:
| This sounds like an honest attempt to be more objective, but it's
| still so subjective that I question the value.
|
| >Vague platitudes: some people have a tendency to fall back on
| vague generalities in behavioral interviews. "In recruiting, it's
| all about communication!" "No org structure is perfect!" If they
| don't follow this up with a more specific, precise or nuanced
| claim, they may not be a strong first-principles thinker."
|
| I don't think that conclusion follows. I think what is usually
| happening there is that the person is saying what they think you
| want to hear.
|
| Ironically the phrase "first principles thinker" sounds like
| vague business speak to me.
| ordu wrote:
| The point of interview is not to be objective or something
| like, the point is to maximize chances for a good hire. Your
| chosen example is the one of several, and don't forget it is an
| hour of talking. No one decides on this answer alone.
|
| From other hand if it is so hard to get some kind of behaviour
| from an interviewee then maybe it is really not their kind of
| behaviour? Not something they would do naturally without
| nudging?
|
| Judging by my own experience, it is hard to me to hide my
| normal way of thinking, it needs some conscious effort, and if
| given an excuse to talk along my normal line of thought I would
| do it. And if I was nudged to do it and I didn't because I
| thought it is not the right time or place for it, then it would
| be a pathetic inability to read a situation I'm in.
|
| Anyway it is all probabilistic judgements, you cannot get
| anything certain in a psychology. But if you got a bunch of
| probabilistic signals then you can decide probabilistically.
|
| And you cannot get anything "objective" in psychology.
| Everything is subjective, even formalized tests. To this day
| people have no test that allows to decide if there is a human
| on the other side of a communication. The best we have is
| Turing Test which is laughable excuse for a test, not an
| objective measure. We cannot reliably measure a difference
| between human and non-human, how could we hope to measure
| reliably a difference between a good hire and a bad one?
| neilv wrote:
| > _The second sentence (context /problem/solution) is important
| for helping the candidate keep their initial answer focused--
| otherwise, they are more likely to ramble for a long time and
| leave less time for you to... Dig into details_
|
| How about, instead of asking "Tell me about a time you...", and
| you presuming to understand the situation so well that you can
| make judgments about nuance based on the off-the-cuff example you
| asked for, and trying to cut them short from "rambling"...
|
| You instead ask them "Say you have a situation like X; how would
| you approach it?" And you can change the situation by adding
| information, "What if the report responds Y?"
|
| Then both people are operating from closer to similar information
| about the situation. (Though it's still possible that the
| interviewee understands something about these situations in
| general that the interviewer doesn't.)
|
| This also avoids dredging up past unpleasant situations (someone
| with more experience will have handled more unpleasant
| situations, but that doesn't mean it doesn't invoke a somber
| mood, if they're not acting or oblivious).
|
| It also means they don't have to also think about how much they
| can say under NDA and being discreet about personnel matters
| (while a poor interviewer might take hesitation or choosing words
| carefully as interviewee trying to put themselves in the best
| light or keep a fabricated story straight).
|
| An expected objection to this approach of spinning a hypothetical
| situation is that candidates might just say what they think are
| the correct answers. But knowing the correct answers is at least
| half the problem. And what do you think many candidates are doing
| in the interview anyway, if they are the kind to know the correct
| answers, but not follow them in real life.
| volkk wrote:
| problem with hypotheticals is most people can give an ideal way
| to handle a situation, but when the actual scenario presents
| itself, they deal with it in a non ideal way. I'd like to find
| out what that non-ideal way is and if the delta is small
| enough, then that person meets the bar. i can also add
| supplementary questions if i didn't get enough of a signal,
| such as the one you presented (i.e what do you think you could
| have done better)
|
| should add that the more you dig, the better you can identify
| where truth/embellishments lay. a reaaaaally good liar is rare
| and you can somewhat tell across differing kinds of quetsions
| where the red flags are. just need to create a robust system of
| questioning. this all sounds dystopian as i write it, but
| unfortunately that is the nature of interviewing
| ryandrake wrote:
| Both yours and the author's suggestions are great, will have to
| give em a try.
|
| So many candidates torpedo their own interview by doing that
| "Word Salad" dump when you ask them a question. It's like they
| have a bunch of unstructured responses prepared for any topic,
| and if you mention one of those topics in your question, they
| just unload the dump truck full of words and ramble until you
| tell them to stop talking. Always looking for techniques to
| steer candidates away from this behavior which sadly is
| happening more and more.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That behavior is the result of nervousness and being in the
| stressful and unpleasant situation of having to do interviews
| at all. I'm not sure there's a lot that can be done to reduce
| it, honestly.
| neilv wrote:
| That Word Salad dump sounds like something politicians will
| sometimes do in a media interview. In that case, I guess they
| want to project an image of having a response, and also hit
| voter emotional notes and party talking points.
|
| In job interviews, I guess part of the problem could be that
| we've institutionalized "interview prep" rituals now, and
| people train for the rituals, including things like the
| "correct" answers to behavioral questions, and even the right
| keywords to hit.
|
| So, people not being confident of the answer they're trying
| to get correct might kinda spam the Word Salad of keywords,
| either as panicked flailing when they think they should be
| talking, or because it's a conscious last-resort tactic (like
| the standardized test prep classes that teach you what to do
| when you don't know the answer but want to maximize your
| score anyway).
|
| One time I remember going kinda Word Salad myself, was in a
| non-interview meeting, when I was escalating a serious issue
| through official channels, a long time ago. The official in
| the meeting was (unbeknownst to me, when I was going to a ton
| of work to get this meeting) secretly misaligned with their
| ostensible role, visibly very hostile to me from the start,
| and misunderstanding something. There was insufficient
| bandwidth to keep up with correcting them, and I realized
| that the situation had just taken a very bad turn... so I
| started desperately using rapid vague hand-waving generality
| high-level summaries. Maybe this Word Salad-ish instance has
| some overlap with some job interview Word Salads -- it's not
| necessarily always that the interviewee doesn't know the
| answer, but maybe the interviewer isn't getting something, or
| is asking a poor question, or seems negative towards the
| interviewee?
| slyall wrote:
| It's happening more and more because interviewers are asking
| these questions.
|
| They are looking for a nice story where I had conflict with
| my manager I used STAR to solve it and everybody was happy.
|
| So interviewees have to prepare such stories, remember the
| details and adjust things to make them look good. Because
| saying "I don't really remember anything like that happening
| recently to me" or "We sat in stunned silence for a minute
| and went on with the meeting" doesn't cut it during
| interviews.
|
| Maybe managers ask these "personal conflict" questions so
| much because that is a bigger part of their job. But for ICs
| (mostly anyway) they are pretty uncommon.
| fifilura wrote:
| "Say you have a situation like X; how would you approach it?"
|
| This is the opposite to a behavioral question, as given by the
| context.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| > Say you have a situation like X; how would you approach it
|
| everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face
|
| that's why you ask what happened historically vs. what you
| would do
|
| if you ask me what will i do if you put a cookie in front of me
| when im on a diet, id say id turn it down
|
| historically, ive never turned down a cookie
| neilv wrote:
| Highly-trained boxers have a plan until they get punched in
| the face.
|
| A bigger problem is that you have a lot of people getting
| into fights without even being able to think of a credible
| plan in theory.
|
| Tell me what your ideal self would do, and if you have great
| answers, you're ahead of maybe most people. Even if you don't
| know for certain that you wouldn't freeze the next time
| you're punched in the face.
|
| Also, the fighter who can relate multiple times they got
| punched in the face and were stunned might still be a better
| fighter than the one who cherry-picks a time they didn't get
| stunned and can spin a story of the plan working out well.
| (ObSeinfeld: karate class.
| "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nuOtsgHjdY&t=3m17s")
| btilly wrote:
| As someone who has given such interviews, and been taught to
| give such interviews, the first version works. Your version
| doesn't.
|
| This is illustrated by my single favorite interview question
| was someone being interviewed for a senior devops role. The
| question was, "What was the worst disaster that you've
| personally caused?" The purpose of the question is, "When the
| shit hits the fan, will you be in CYA mode?" The only wrong
| answer was no answer. Anyone who has worked with production for
| a long time, has made mistakes that cause a disaster. You
| should have a good example, explain how you screwed up, and
| what you learned from it.
|
| If you ask people whether they will behave defensively.
| Everyone will say that they don't. Ask them to come up with a
| hypothetical where they don't behave defensively, and they'll
| give you a great answer. But ask them to remember and talk
| about a situation which it is natural to feel defensive about,
| and you'll get an honest answer.|
|
| That particular question extreme. If you haven't worked with
| production systems for a long time, you probably don't have any
| major disasters. But the same idea applies. And the best tool
| interviewing I know of to get there is the STAR method. In turn
| you ask for:
|
| (S)ituation. What was the situation?
|
| (T)ask. What task were you given in this situation
|
| (A)ction. What did you do?
|
| (R)esult. What was the outcome?
|
| People have a really hard time faking it. Seriously try it.
| Interestingly, the converse is also true. If someone asks a
| question, a STAR response looks good. So much so that
| interviewees are coached to do it.
|
| If the devops question is off limits, what specific questions
| can you ask? Well here is a real example. Amazon has a set of
| leadership principles, you can find them at
| https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-
| workplace/leadership-..., by which they judge employees. If you
| interview with them, the recruiter will tell you to prepare
| examples for all of them. You'll literally get questions of the
| form, "Tell me about a time in the last 5 years that you
| demonstrated (principle X)." That then walk through the STAR
| method.
|
| I have many complaints about different parts of Amazon. I have
| no complaints about the effectiveness of their interviewing
| system.
| purpleblue wrote:
| Any guide or blog post on how to interview that doesn't compare
| interview notes to performance reviews after hiring someone is
| basically bullshit.
|
| Anyone can write a blog post about what they think is a good
| interview but there's no empirical proof that their interview
| technique works.
| louwrentius wrote:
| True to the extend that you'll never get a real evaluation,
| because you'll never know how the people who were turned down,
| would have fared.
| khokhol wrote:
| Good advice overall, and definitely an improvement over the usual
| interview boilerplate that candidates have to trod through.
|
| However, in some places it seems to be too cavalier -- in the
| sense that it suggests we now have a magic prism with which we
| can "diagnose" the candidate's shallowness or lack of candor.
| When really they're just saying something basically innocuous.
| Cause it's like, been a long and mostly boring interview process
| so far, has it not, and they're trying to slog their way through
| the canned / pre-programmed (if arguably necessary) part of the
| process like you are.
|
| For example, under "Things to watch out for":
|
| _High standards: if they say there's nothing they wish they'd
| done differently, this may also be lack of embarrassing honesty,
| or not holding themselves to a high standard_
|
| Or they had a genuinely shitty experience (with high costs to
| finances, relationships and/or health) that was 80 percent out of
| the blue and beyond their control. And they'd really rather just
| move on. Or if they did tell you the real context and their real
| reasons for doing X -- you'd very likely ding them (quite likely
| fatally) for doing so.
| louwrentius wrote:
| The hubris of those hiring tips & tricks posts never cease to
| amaze me.
|
| Hubris in the sense that they really think that they are doing
| something right, so much so that they blog/post about it.
|
| Yet, if I take this post as an example, I notice a lack of self-
| reflection about bias en why you would interpret behaviour a
| certain way and not another.
|
| In the end, it's all subjective, and everybody is doing their
| best, but how valuable is it really?
|
| Especially, if you don't know anything about the
| company/organization that this person is hiring for?
| paulcole wrote:
| One thing that I've noticed makes a difference is to be positive
| and complimentary to the candidate at the start of the interview.
| Make it clear that you're excited to talk to them and that you
| are genuinely excited to hear what they have to say.
|
| I've missed out on hiring good people who were nervous or worried
| about doing a bad job in the interview. I'm sure I still do miss
| out on some but I've found a method that lets some people feel
| more comfortable without being overly difficult on me and can
| live with that.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > Ask how big of an effect something had and how they know.
| (Example: I had a head of technical recruiting tell me "I did X
| and our outbound response rate improved;" when I asked how much,
| he said from 11% to 15%, but the sample size was small enough
| that that could have been random chance!)
|
| Where is this evidence in this post? What beneficial effects did
| your new behavioral interviewing technique produce?
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but whenever I hear a question like "tell me
| about a time..." - I simply can't remember. These routine job-
| related things just don't stick out in my mind as something to
| catalog for some future contrived performance and disappear out
| of my mind together with other uninteresting and unimportant
| noise, like a name of the clerk at the DMV or what was advertised
| during the commercial break when I turned on the TV in my hotel
| room.
|
| I suspect that people who readily jump in with an answer - are
| the ones you claim to guard against, those who drilled and
| trained for giving responses to these interviews.
| slyall wrote:
| I can still remember an interview that consisted of nothing but
| those questions and I hadn't prepared answers so I either
| answered "I can't think of a time sorry" or tried to recall one
| on the spot. Interview was a train-wreck.
|
| Since then I have a bunch written down that I review before I
| interview. It's like leetcode questions, if you are going to
| get them during the interview you study for them. You don't
| expect to naturally solve them without prep.
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