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How I build and run behavioral interviews

benkuhn.net

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Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#31

Post by ordu »

sarchertech wrote: post #10

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 th…

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?

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#32

Post by slyall »

VincentEvans wrote: post #29

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…

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.

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#33

Post by neilv »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #28
neilv wrote: post #11

> 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…

> 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

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")

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#34

Post by btilly »

neilv wrote: post #11

> 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…

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.

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#35

Post by nico »

VincentEvans wrote: post #29

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…

Exactly

Essentially every single interview/recruiting process is selecting for someone who is good at going through the process, rather than selecting for someone who is actually good for the job

It’s pretty frustrating and incredibly time consuming

You could be the perfect person for a job, but if you haven’t practiced interviewing for a while, you’ll most likely not get the job

And the opposite is true. After enough interviews, you’ll get practice, gain confidence and will start looking like the better candidate, even if you are not the best for the job

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#36

Post by neilv »

btilly wrote: post #34
neilv wrote: post #11

> 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…

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 onl…

I'm very sympathetic to wanting to weed out people who'd CYA in my org. I'd start by conveying our culture, and go from there.

The Amazon interviewing system came across as uncaring big-corporate cattle pipeline. So it was effective in making me withdraw my application. (Maybe that was a good thing for both parties.)

> People have a really hard time faking it. Seriously try it.

I know multiple storytelling-skilled people who I suspect can fake this easily. Most of them seem to go to pains to only use their powers for good. Interestingly, those ones have a very negative reaction when they sense someone being dishonest/manipulative. Though, the one who hasn't always used their powers for good... is CEO for something you use. :)

I wonder whether some of the differences in how people think about interviews are due to varying strengths of the interviewer. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if those storytelling-skilled people are better than average at detecting when someone else is fabricating elements of a narrative.

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#37

Post by maximinus_thrax »

louwrentius wrote: post #14

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 h…

I'm sad to have scrolled down so far to see your comment. This type of content is scary and a huge red flag for the company the person works at. I mean it's one thing to experiment/improve/etc.. but to come out with 'the right way' (TM) and publicize is straight-up Dunning-Kruger.

Also,

> To get a strong signal from a behavioral interview question I usually need around 15 minutes

I laughed out loud on that one. I also need about 15 minutes to get a strong signal from any interview question for any candidate, because I am biased and then I challenge my bias for the rest of the interview, because I don't think I'm smart enough to have cracked the 'hire the right people' code.

> doing this stuff worked better than not doing it

Better for what? Is there a follow-up on the performance of the hire based on doing vs not doing this? Or can it be rephrased to 'doing this stuff gave me a superior sense of confidence about how well I interview people'

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#38

Post by sarchertech »

ordu wrote: post #31
sarchertech wrote: post #10

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 th…

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…

> how could we hope to measure reliably a difference between a good hire and a bad one?

We can’t. That’s my point.

Re: How I build and run behavioral interviews

#40

Post by abakker »

I don't know. I don't do a lot of job interviews, but I do a lot of research/expert interviews. To me, there is not much distinction and the major takeaway from this post seems to be, "Preparation and objectives are good when doing research"....umm yeah. You're there to find something out, so putting in the effort to know what that thing is and design the questions that can plausibly get you to the answers you want seems like obvious advice.

To me, if you are using interviews to determine the best way to spend your $salary_money on a person to get $outcome_stuff, then you really can't be walking into it without first introspecting on the knowns, unknowns, and unknowables of a decision. I'd hate to estimate potential team dynamics from interview responses, but I can absolutely validate that the candidate knows facts they need to know. But, it would take the preparatory effort to understand those things myself.

The major thing I take away from this post is the conviction that hiring approaches really don't seem to have progressed.

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