Author Topic: How to Interview People for a Job  (Read 2226 times)

Sailor Sam

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How to Interview People for a Job
« on: August 25, 2021, 06:41:19 PM »
I’ve been informed by The Powers that I’ll be conducting 4 interviews, with the intention of filling one open civilian technical position inside my Division.

I have never in my life interviewed for a job, or held interviews for other people. I’ve been given a list of 10 suggested questions, along with a (much longer) list of the gov’t rules and regulations on hiring civilians. However, the applicants have already been screened for technical expertise, and the list of potential questions are dumbshit stupid, corporate bullshit.

Can anyone advise me on how to conduct a good interview, that will help both the applicants, and lead to hiring someone who doesn’t suck?

G-dog

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2021, 06:42:28 PM »
Check “Ask a Manager” for tips and guidelines.

JJ-

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2021, 07:40:54 PM »
As somebody who does a fair bit of interviewing on the federal civilian side for senior technical positions, I'll offer up some info. I'm on a phone so it may be kind of weak and not fully fleshed out.

First, the interviews can actually be an opportunity to let them know what the job is. Sure, something went out on usajobs but does it match up with what the day to day looks like? This can also be a good spot to introduce whether they'll be working on a team, office structure, etc. It's really their only opportunity to get an idea of what the job is other than at the end if you ask if they have questions, so sometimes it takes up more time than the questions themselves.

Second, you can do 10 questions and fill an hour and make everybody suffer or you can do 5 and take half an hour or less. You don't have to use the corporate questions but you need to know what you need for the role. On paper it's one thing, but in office it may be something different. Do you need firm technical skills? If so, make a majority of the questions technical and make sure they are as good as they say they are on paper. If you are looking for soft skills and team cohesion type role, team lead, contract manager, you may not need to be so technical oriented on the suite of questions, but definitely should ask a few technical questions in those domains.

Not knowing the role or any of why they're hiring, I'll say for civilians... The whole what did you do when your management told you to do something you disagreed with can be helpful. We've had people straight up tell us they did what they wanted to do, and despite aceing other questions that one was a hard pass. Also, why do you want this job. I've had people tell me they want the job for the move to Denver and that just leaves a bad impression that they just want a government paid move. These are gov employees after all.

I will say that if the 4 folks on your list have passed under the new SME review rules with a panel and them ranking 80% or more, then you probably have seasoned technical folks and can focus more on soft skills. Honestly just make sure you ask the questions that help you decide whether this person can do the job and that would work well with others (if needed but important for teams).

As far as questions delivery goes... Federal interviews can be incredibly cold. There are lots of rules about providing the same interview to each person interviewing. That doesn't mean the experience has to be the same. I would encourage you to take advantage of an opening from the interviewee when they mention something to ask deeper or get them to open up with a follow-up question (that sounds neat, can you tell me more?). 

Lastly, for now anyway, you can always recommend follow-up interviews if you're not sure. Let the hiring manager know the pros cons of each candidate and punt the decision up the ladder if you can't make up your mind and don't have a preference.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2021, 07:44:59 PM by JJ- »

exterous

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2021, 08:23:26 PM »
Does 'screened for technical expertise' mean they were already interviewed by people who can suss that out or that their resume looked good when filtering by keywords?

What questions depends a bit on what their role and your role in this are. Are you a peer? Have a more senior technical role than theirs would be? Same dept? Different dept? But a general good rule of thumb is to ask them to tell you about specific situations instead of hypotheticals. I particularly like questions that ask how they handle something that went wrong that is relevant to the job. Did they disagree about a direction the project or dept was headed in? If so how did they handle that? Was a key deliverable missed? If so look for signs they tried to address the cause, communicate quickly upwards and mitigate the resulting business consequences. If they will be in a position where they have to tell someone "No" to a request\demand ask for a time that they've had to do that. And then have follow-ups where you look for things that align with company process\culture. If customer satisfaction is key then ask "How did you communicate that you couldn't do this" and look for responses that show they are trying to show empathy and give the person they told "No" some space to share their thoughts.

I also like to ask what people are looking for in a job but in a way that avoids the cliché "Good work environment, good teammates, career growth" response. My world is IT and our teams get involved in all kinds of new, crazy and random requests. People who love to play with new things all the time love it. Someone who has incredible technical skill but wants to be a master at only one or two areas would hate it so that is important to find out during the process.

One somewhat different thing I like to do is to send out a more involved scenario or two ahead of time to the candidate pool and let them know it will be asked during the interview. I do that for two reasons:
1) Most people have left an interview and thought "Oh crap! I should have said this instead" or "I left out this important step!". In most jobs you have more than 6 seconds to think about how you would handle situations
2) A shocking number of people don't prepare for it at all but some take it and run with it. As a practical example we have one environment that is rather uncommon in the industry but has some good information out there about it so I use it in a scenario. Answers have ranged from the deer-in-headlights "I didn't think about this at all" to the "I did some googling and came up with a decent response" to one guy who found the repo, set it up in his home lab got sucked in and built out a lot of features because he thought it was really cool. Now it rarely gets to that level but still offers a chance at differentiating responses using a different method then the traditional Q&A portions.

Not sure if you'd be allowed to do that though.

I do keep a couple of "dumbshit stupid, corporate bullshit" questions on there because I've gotten some shockingly stupid and disqualifying answers to them.

And lastly I would recommend taking good notes with specific details like "I liked that she talked about X and specifically this detail which showed a thorough knowledge of the process" and perhaps an overall summary at the end "Strong skills in this area, a little weak here and uncertain about their ability here." This can help you speak to candidates in detail so "I liked Steve" turns into "Steve showed knowledge in this area because he said X Y and Z. I found Sam to be a weaker candidate because their response missed covering key topics like this and this" And if you record areas that might be a weakness or you are unsure about this gives any other interviewer a chance to dig into those areas should that be important to do so.

JJ-

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2021, 09:31:23 PM »
Does 'screened for technical expertise' mean they were already interviewed by people who can suss that out or that their resume looked good when filtering by keywords?

My guess is that it's been strictly a resume review that's been done to this point if it's sailor Sam's first rodeo. Though clarification from him if it's second round would be helpful. Steps prior to interviews is an HR screen for basic quals, then an SME review of resumes for best qualified. That list goes on to then be available for interviews.

The rest of your post has much more eloquent info than mine. Especially on taking notes.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2021, 09:36:05 PM by JJ- »

gooki

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2021, 03:33:28 AM »
Remember the applicant is interviewing you as well.

BussoV6

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2021, 08:35:46 AM »
Remember the applicant is interviewing you as well.

Yeah, very important. Always make sure you have plenty of time for their questions and expectations. It saves everyone's time if this is done at the interview stage.

ncornilsen

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2021, 08:46:32 AM »
Tom Foster's videos on Time Span. I found this helpful in determining what kind of employee I needed and how to figure out if the interviewee was what I needed.


ROF Expat

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2021, 09:29:46 AM »
Do you have some senior and wise civilian employees who have been in your section for a long time?  If so, my first step would be to talk to them.  I'd ask for their views about what kind of employee they'd like to see fill the position (or what kind of employee they absolutely don't want to see fill the position), and their thoughts in general on what they'd be looking for in someone who will make the office a better and more efficient place to work. 

Those of us who move in and out in a few years can usually benefit from the views of people who have been around for decades (and may have to deal with the guys we hire for a long time.).  And you usually score points just for asking. 

scottish

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2021, 03:26:59 PM »
Behavioural interviews.

Ask candidates to describe how they handled challenging situations, especially ones they're likely to encounter in your organization.

"Tell me about a time when you had to meet a difficult deadline.    What did you do to succeed?"

"We have lots of compute performance issues.   Tell me how you improved system performance in your previous role."


Sailor Sam

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2021, 04:28:55 PM »
Thanks everyone, these are astute and helpful observations.

The applicants have all passed the initial wicket of getting their applications through USAJobs, and have completed the second wicket of getting the nod from their technical interview by SME’s. This final interview for the 4 still standing is to make sure they’ll be a good fit in my team. I’m nominally the leader here, but I’ll definitely be deferring to the opinion of the other civvies on the team, who will have to live with whoever I hire.

@spartana, being currently in Haiti, sweating through my same 3 pairs of undies day after day, I’m uncertain about this in-advisability of ordering the floggings continue until morale improves..? How else do the men stay happy and focused?

ender

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #11 on: August 26, 2021, 08:05:34 PM »
I'd suggest practicing at least once first, it takes a bit to get used to imo.

AccidentialMustache

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #12 on: August 26, 2021, 09:47:10 PM »
I like the practicing.

Would one of your civvies do a mock interview with you and provide candid feedback to you? They may also red-flag a question you ask where you don't realize you're edging near one of the "no-no" things you aren't allowed to ask, because you haven't done interviewing before. Your civvies are likely more in tune with those, having had to deal with them and overbearing HR depts for (possibly) years.

I'm sure you could find a sucker on the forums to mock-interview-talk-to-you for an hour or whatever your interview time is, but none of us have the context the civvies you already have do, so they're likely going to provide better feedback.

Paul der Krake

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #13 on: August 26, 2021, 10:32:39 PM »
Don't The Powers™ have a "how to interview effectively" training module thingy that you could take? Something that lays out qualities and principles they look for in people.

Alternatively, bring a chess set.


MayDay

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #14 on: August 27, 2021, 04:53:43 AM »
I like to ask questions about what their ideal day is like- do they prefer to come in and be surprised every morning, or to have their whole day planned out.  What makes them excited to come to work and what their least favorite part of their current role is, etc. To try to see if they are going to hate parts of the job on my team. My team is often in fire fighting mode and people who like to plan out their whole day/week are miserable..... It's better to find that out ahead of time!  But you'd probably want the opposite for a project manager.

MudPuppy

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #15 on: August 27, 2021, 05:14:04 AM »
I assume you are locked into those questions?

My preferred interview formula was to describe the work environment, the team, the nature of the job, hours expected. Then I offered opportunity for them to ask questions. The I asked an informal question, 5-8 formal questions (depending on the role), and one more informal. Then they had another opportunity to ask questions or tell me anything they wanted me to know that they hadn’t already had an opportunity to say. This rarely took more than 30 minutes.

mm1970

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #16 on: August 27, 2021, 10:37:09 AM »
I started reading this whole thread with "wow, that is a great idea!  That one too!"
I ended this whole thread with "damn, I REALLY hate interviewing people."

RocketSurgeon

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #17 on: August 27, 2021, 10:58:17 AM »
Hire whoever gives the worst interview so that you never get asked to do it again

efree

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #18 on: August 28, 2021, 12:34:15 AM »
Do you absolutely have to do the interviews alone? Granted, I live in Europe, but I've participated in a few interviews for my would-be team members even though I'm not a manager. The goal was to provide information to the candidate about what working in my team is like and to help the manager decide which candidate would be the best fit for the team. Since that is the point of your interviews, I think having another team member participate would be really helpful.

skip207

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #19 on: August 30, 2021, 05:51:31 AM »
2 of my favourite questions to ask are:

If you were hiring for this position what key skills would you look for in the candidate?

And

If you could do any job what would it be and why?

Chris Pascale

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Re: How to Interview People for a Job
« Reply #20 on: August 30, 2021, 01:53:18 PM »
In federal hiring, interviewers are locked into asking the same questions to every candidate and writing down their answers. They also start the interview by saying "we'll be writing what you say" as a means of letting the person know not to feel bad it's not a real conversation, and they also say why they are doing it this way.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!