knowledge hub

Explore

Interview Guide

Interview Process

Screening Interview 1️⃣

Culling the list

The screening interview is a short, phone-based interview designed to clear out B and C players from your roster of candidates. Be sure to

Hit the Gong Fast⁠

if you are not sold immediately.

Ask candidate questions then tell them about us.

We don't want to taint their answers or have them repeat back what you told them about us. Example. "Hi, I am really looking forward to our time together. Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to spend the first twenty minutes getting to know you. After that, I am happy to answer any questions you have so you can get to know us. Sound good?"

Questions

Why do you want to work here?

What are your career goals? (if they say 'I don't know', ask for goal in the next 2 years)

What are you really good at professionally? Interacting with customers.

What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally?

Who were your last two bosses and how will they each rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to them?

1. Why do you want to work here?

This questions aim to answer one questions, "Do your career interests match our company goals?"

As we know, work at HLA can be challenging, this will help us determine if the candidate truly wants to do the work not whether he/she can.

Answers

Answers

Good Answers

Ok Answers

Bad Answers (continue with interview even if you hear one of these)

"I come here with my family and we love it! I like the energy of the staff and feel right at home." A customer so knows what we serve. Likes the energy which should be friendly and outgoing. Feels at home bringing the flavors of Mexico to the tribe.

I am looking for a job and this position caught my eye when I was looking at jobs. Looks like a good place to work." No passion for company mission, yet was drawn to our position's post and likes the energy. Ask the candidate what caught your eye about the position?

"I heard yall paid well, how much you pay?"

"I want to grow and learn. This is the perfect place since I love and am passionate about Mexican desserts and snacks." Has hunger to learn and willingness to do the job.

“I like your treats.” Or any other answer that doesn’t specify why us

"I need a job"

"It seems easy"

There are no rows in this table

Count

⁠

2. What are your career goals?

The best candidates will share career goals that match your company's needs. Be sure they speak with passion and energy about their goals. They should be ecstatic, these are their goals.

Gallup researchers uncovered, Motivation - drive for achievement, to be the top innate trait that predicts performance across job types. A word of caution: Be sure that motivation is linked to the job at hand, otherwise that drive will fade in the day to day reality of the job.

Career anwers

Career anwers

Good

Ok Answers

Bad Answers

"I want to join a company that want to bring the flavors of Mexico to the US. I love taking on challenges and know hard work is at the core of success." It matches our company mission

"I saw on your website you bring Mexico and you won an award for best dessert, I want to be part of a winning team." They don't really know what they want so they are echoing our website.

“I want to make money to pay my bills” We want their goals to align with our company goals. Not making money.

"I love serving customers the flavors of Mexico and doing everything that comes with it" Matches our company needs

“I want to be a millionaire” We want their goals to align with our company goals. Not making money.

Build things that are meaningful - open source , contribute on a scale where it makes a difference

There are no rows in this table

Count

⁠

3. What are you really good at professionally?

This question should generate plenty of dialogue. You shouldn't have any problem getting people to list their strengths. Try to push the candidate to give you eight positives to build a complete picture of their aptitude. Ask for examples to help put their strengths into context. If they say they are decisive, press for an example of a time when this trait served them well, and remember, you are listening for strengths that match the job at hand. If you see major gaps between their strenghts and our scorecard, screen them out.

Good at answers

Good at answers

Good

Bad

Getting things done examples must reflect statement. Same applies to the ones below. While the initial answer may be on point, finding out why makes or brakes the answer.

Public Speaking ok because speaking is a good quality in itself but how often will you need PS to get the job done?

Solving problems

Excel while the job may require excel or any other software. You are asking what are you REALLY GOOD at doing?! We need people to add value to our organization and challenge existing team to be better.

Always getting better/ finding new, better ways for working

Emails

LEARN

Suggesting new initiatives and carrying them out

DEVELOPEMENT

Executing tasks

Communication

Customer service

There are no rows in this table

Count

⁠

4. What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally?

Third question captures the other side of the balance sheet. You could ask for weaknesses outright, but too often that approach yields cookie cutter, self-serving answers like I am impatient for results or I work too hard. Instead, let the candidates answer as they will. If you hear cookie-cutter answers, simply say, that sounds like a strength to me. Ask what are you really not good at or not interested in doing? You want them to give you five to eight examples.

If the candidate does not give an answer either you are not re-phrasing the question enough or the candidate is so stubborn that he/she will not a single thing they did not enjoy doing.

If you are still not making any progress. Remind the candidate that if they advance to the next step in our process, we will be contacting their previous employers or coaches to help us identify their weaknesses. This should help them give examples.

5. Who were your last five bosses and how will they each rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to them?

Note the language: How will they rate you when we talk to them? Not if we talk to them. When. This will help candidates be more honest. Follow up by pressing for details. What makes them think their boss would rate them a 7? We are looking for 7 and up. Consider 7 as neutral and anything below as bad. We have found that people who give themselves a rating of 6 or lower are really saying 2. Be sure to check up with all 5 bosses not just one.

After the interview

Ask yourself Do this person's strengths match my scorecard? Are the weaknesses manageable? Am I thrilled about brining this person in for a series of interviews based on the data I have? You want to be excited about the possibility. You want to have the feeling that you have found the one. If you have any hesitation, or if you find yourself thinking you want to bring in the candidate in just to test them a little more, then screen them out.

Who Interview 2️⃣

The power of patterns for choosing who.

⏬ Chaos for hiring without the Who Interview process - aka "instinct". ⏬

⁠

In this interview we will go through the candidates work history going back as far as 15 years. If we are hiring right out of school, we will in turn discuss their journey through school (groups, clubs, projects). The goal is to gather immense amount of decision data points.

Start with the beginning of the candidate's career and work towards present day, the order is very important. Ask this set of questions about each job the candidate has had.

The Who interview typically will last three hours. It may last one hour with entry level positions and up to five hours with CEO's of multi billion-dollar companies.

We recommend you conduct the Who interview with a colleague- perhaps someone from HR. This tandem approach makes it easier to run the interview. One person can ask the questions while the other takes notes. Either way, two heads are always better than one.

Remember, every hour you spend in the Who Interview, you'll save hundreds of hours not dealing with C Players. The return is staggeringly high.

Kick off the interview by setting expectations. Here's a simple script:

Thank you for taking the time to visit us today. As we have already discussed, we are going to do a chronological interview to walk through each job you have held. For each job I am going to ask you five core questions: (say five questions below). At the end of the interview we will discuss your career goals and aspirations, and you will have a chance to ask me questions. Eighty percent of the process is in this room, but if we mutually decide to continue, we will conduct reference calls to complete the process.Finally, while this sounds like a lengthy interview, it will go remarkably fast. I want to make sure you have the opportunity to share your full story, so it is my job to guide the pace of the discussion. Sometimes, we'll go into more depth in a period of your career. Other times, I will ask that we move on to the next topic. I'll try to make sure we leave plenty of time to cover your most recent, and frankly, most relevant jobs. Do you have any questions about the process?

Who Interview questions for each previous job

What were you hired to do?

What accomplishments are you most proud of?

What were some low points during that job?

Who were the people you worked with? Specifically.

What was your boss's name and how do you spell that? What was it like working with him/her? What will he/she tell me were your biggest strengths and areas for improvement?

How would you rate the team you inherited on an A, B, C scale? What changes did you make? Did you hire anybody? Fire anybody? How would you rate the team when you left it on A, B, C scale?

Why did you leave that job?

1. What were you hired to do?

This question is a clear window into the candidates' goals and targets for a specific job. You are trying to discover what their scorecard might have been if they had one. Coach them by asking how they thought their success was measured in the role. What were their mission and key outcomes? What competencies might have mattered? Look for specifics not generalities.

2. What accomplishments are you most proud of?

Should generate wonderful discussions about the peaks of a person's career. In our experience, this is where candidates naturally focus on what really mattered to them at that time in their career rather than regurgitating their resume.

Good Answer

Ideally, candidates will tell you about accomplishments that match the job outcomes they just described to you. Even better, they match the scorecard we are trying to fill. A Players tend to talk about outcomes linked to expectations.

Bad Answer

Be wary when a candidate's accomplishments seem to lack any correlation to the expectations of the job. Be sure to listen for that clue. B and C players talk generally about events, people they met, or aspects of the job they liked without ever getting results.

3. What were some low points during that job?

People can be hesitant to share their lows at first, opting instead to say something like, "I didn't have any lows. Those were good years! Yup, those were good years, I tell you!" The disclaimers are understandable, but there isn't a person alive who can seriously make this claim. Everybody, and we mean everybody, has work lows. Our recommendation is to re-frame the question over and over until the candidate gets the message.

What went really wrong? What was your biggest mistake? What would you have done differently? What part of the job did you not like? In what ways were your peers stronger than you?

Don't let the candidate off the hook. Keep pushing until the candidate shares the lows.

4. Who were the people you worked with?

Builds on fourth question of the screening interview.

Be sure to follow the order of the following questions:

What was your boss's name? Then ask them to spell it no matter how common the name.

What did you think about working with your boss?

What will you boss say are your biggest strengths and areas of improvement. Be sure to say will, not would.

Positive answer- They will offer high praise for their bosses and how they received mentoring and coaching from them over the years.

Neutral answer- Sound somewhat more reserved without being particularly positive of negative.

Negative answer- They will tell you their boss was useless, the next was a jerk, and the third a complete moron. Obviously, if they give this last answer, screen them out. What colorful name will you earn next?

5. Why did you leave that job?

The final question of this vital Who Interview can be one of the most insight-producing questions you ask.

Was the candidate for our position promoted, recruited, or fired from each job along their career progression?

Were they taking the next step in their career or running from something?

How did they feel about it?

How did their boss react to the news?

A Players perform well, and bosses express disappointment when they quit. B and C players perform less well and are nudged out of their jobs or forcefully pushed out by their bosses. Don't accept vague answers like, "My boss and I didn't connect." Get curious and dig deeper to understand why.

⁠

Master tactic push/pull⁠

will give you more insight to this last, critical answer.

Focused Interview 3️⃣

Getting to know more

The Who Interview will get you most of the way toward the right answer of who to hire. Conduct it in tandem with a colleague, and the two of you will have a rich dataset to work from.

We recommend one more step, the focused interview which will allow you to gather additional, specific information about your candidate. These interviews also offer a chance to involve other team members directly in the hiring process. Just be sure you don't make this another Who Interview.

Guide

The purpose of this interview is to talk about BLANK (fill in the blank with a specific outcome of competency, such as a person's experience selling to new customers, building and leading a team, creating strategic plans, acting aggressively and persistently, etc.)

What are you biggest accomplishments in this area during your career?

What are your insights into your biggest mistakes and lessons learned in this area?

After you ask each question, remember to

Get Curious⁠

⁠

It is similar to the commonly used behavioral interview with one major difference: it is focused on the outcomes and competencies of the scorecard, not some vaguely defined job description of manager's intuition.

Double-checking the Cultural Fit

Be sure to include competencies and outcomes that go beyond the specifics of the job to embrace the larger values of the company.

Story

First Solar, a rapidly growing maker of solar panels, found itself challenged by its own success. Its growth created a voracious appetite for A Players, but too many of the talented people who got inside the door couldn't handle the fast-paced culture of the company.

To address this challenge, the company created a cultural fit interview based on the focused interview framework. Mike Ahearn, First Solar's CEO, painted the big picture for us. "We are a fast-moving, aggressive company. We need people on our team who will never be satisfied with the status quo. They need to be results-oriented people who work towards continuous improvement. And they have to put safety first, build deep customer relationships, and recognize that people matter.

"We conduct at least one cultural fit interview for every candidate, using questions built around our cultural values. We find it works really well after the Who interview because the two interviews together ensure we hire people who are both capable of getting the job done and able to thrive in the First Solar culture."

This interview should take fourty-five minutes to one hour

Reference Interview 4️⃣

After the three interviews everything matches up, in your head the candidate already works for you. You may be tempted to skip the reference checks and make an offer now.

Don't skip the reference checks!!!

Don't ask for references!! We select who to call from the contacts we gathered in the Who interview and then we ask the reference to provide another reference. Great people always have many colleges who are ready to say great things about the individual.

Example from retired vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, Robert Hurst. "We hired a chief financial officer. WE were not allowed to make reference calls because she wanted to keep her candidacy a secret. She was a disaster. Her problem was she was too used to process and routine. She moved to a place that is more complicated and stressful, and she could not handle the stress. Without having a chance to do reference calls, you lose 25 percent of the information you should know."

64% of business moguls conduct reference calls for every hire, not just the ones at the top.

Conducting a successful reference interview

Pick the right references- review your notes from the Who Interview and pick the bosses, peers and subordinates with whom you would like to speak. Don't just use the list the candidate gives you.

Ask the candidate to contact the references to set up the calls. We have found that you have twice the chance of actually getting to talk to a reference if you ask the candidate to set up the interview.nConduct the right number of reference interviews. We recommend 7 total but if hiring out of school or candidate with little experience be sure to reach out to the boss, peers, subordinates and customers (if applicable).

Reference Interview Questions

In what context did you work with the person?

What were the person's biggest strengths? (ask for multiple examples)

What were the person's biggest areas for improvement back then?

How would you rate his/her overall performance in that job on a 1-10 scale? What about his or her performance causes you to give that rating? (red flag should go up if there are wide discrepancies between what the candidate said in the screening interview and what the reference said. You are looking for 8,9,10 anything below is a red flag)

The person mentioned that you might say he/she struggled with ___________ in that job. Can you tell me more about that? (wording is important "you might say". This suggests to the reference that he/she has permission to talk about the subject because the candidate raised it.

Example. Candidate admitted during interview, "You may hear grumbling from my past team about my unwillingness to share information. But we were a public company, so I could not share everything with everyone." In the reference call with a past subordinate, we primed the pump and said, "The CEO mentioned that subordinates may grumble about his unwillingness to share information. Can you tell me about that?" The subordinate said, "Did he say that? That's not it. It's that the liar would never share any negative feedback to your face, but once you walked out of the room, he'd stab you in the back six ways to Sunday!" Bingo! This is why you do reference checks, people can fake their way through interviews but its much tougher when you reference check multiple people he/she worked with in the past)

Words of wisdom

Don't forget to get curious! What, How, Tell me More

We believe people don't change much, they aren't mutual funds. Past performance really is an indicator of future performance.

The best way to learn about a CEO is not to talk to their bosses, but to their subordinates.

References from your own network offer yet another avenue for gathering objective, unbiased data. If you or your team knows a reference not given by the candidate by all means use it.

You want to hear real enthusiasm in the reference's voice. Luke warm or qualified praise also is likely to signal ambivalence or worse about a candidate."Faint praise in the reference interview is bad praise".

Hearing and understanding the code for risky candidates- We must learn to read between the lines when speaking for references. In general, people don't like to give a negative reference. They want to help their former colleagues, not hurt them. They want to avoid conflict.

If they just confirm dates of employment and say nothing more, that is a bad sign.

Example red flags - "If you are willing to have a guy disagree with you, then hire this person." Using the "if....then" wording is something you must watch out for.

Um's and er's - The reference who hesitates with tough questions. When you ask, "How did so-and-so do?" You want to hear tremendous enthusiasm, not ums and ers and carefully selected words.

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.