How could we interview job candidates to find the right teammates? Why should we care?

Table of contents

Context

Many of us will be asked to interview for the company sooner or later. A lot of times, we may not have prepared much, especially if the company also wants us to “bias for action” and “deliver results” while we are interviewing. Most of us may pick an algorithm, object-orientated design, or system design question and rush to the interview. More often than not, you may not be able to influence so that the hired candidate can work well together with you.

Why Should We Care?

A team’s culture is largely affected by the company’s culture, the leadership’s culture, and each team member’s culture. Out of those, the direct manager has a major impact. However each team member can also greatly influence.

You care about your team culture and do not want the culture to go south.

Outside of job skills, the value system or culture of the job candidate can impact the team culture as well.

I have seen a manager replacement negatively impacted a team’s culture. The team held strong and stuck with it. After one year, the manager had to leave. In some cases, the manager could change behaviors if it is not too bad.

Your Goal of the Interview

You want to find people who are positive and can influence the team culture to improve it, rather than make it worse. You would like to ask questions to find out whether you will enjoy working with them. You want to learn about their core value systems.

Example Questions

After you finish the necessary job skill interview section (algorithm or design), You could ask some questions about their day-to-day work to learn more about them. This can be mixed with some behavioral questions which you may have to ask anyway.

These follow-up questions can be asking details like what exactly happened, when, who were involved, timeline of the story, .etc. If you ask enough questions, it is extremely hard for the candidate to lie or make-up a story. You can also easily find out whether a candidate tends to lie, what he/she would lie about, and whether the lie may be malicious and may negatively impact the team culture.

1. Have you delivered under a very tight timeline? You could ask follow-up questions to find out whether the candidate will blindly follow the manager’s order or follow his/her own belief.
2. Have you had conflict with your coworker and what was the result? You could ask follow-up question to find out whether the candidate believes in thriving by positively helping each other to achieve a win-win on both sides or competing/attacking to prioritize self-survival or self-interest.
3. What are some of your beliefs either come from religion or your own value system? You can ask follow-up questions for examples how the candidate live by these beliefs. For example, the Boy Scouts of America (Scouting USA)‘s scout law includes trustworthy, loyal, helpful, and friendly. A scout can often talk about what happened during a hiking or camping event that demonstrates these scout laws.

Summary

In summary, besides the job skills, you should also try to evaluate the job candidate’s culture and try to hire people with great value systems and beliefs. So there is a better chance that you will collaborate better with them. The team culture may even improve. You could do that by asking detailed questions about their work history and personal values.