Holding wholesome tech interviews [part 6/7]

Benefits of modelling an interview’s information: the candidate’s questions

This article is part of a series on how we can further improve the experience and the outcome of technical interviews, from the side of an interviewer.
For a centralised table of contents for the whole series, check out this Github Gist

TL;DR: skipping or rushing a candidate’s questions will keep our interview more time-boxed, but will also keep their risk of switching companies higher. We explore ways to avoid that.

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reversing the interview

In the previous chapter we went through a pragmatic approach to help us shift an interview’s usual exclusive focus, from the job opening requirements in the first branch bellow, and more towards the candidate area, in the second [what they need] branch:

Completing our interview information hierarchy, our final aim now is to

try and minimise a candidate’s risk of switching their current role and company,

and to do so by planning a time slot, where we would casually invite them to ask away, with the goal of clarifying any question marks that they would have, about our role opening and its closest* environment.

*With an emphasis on closest, as we usually have quicker or just inherent access to technical/team/project information, as technical recruiters.
And to leave any further broader company topics for a final HR/non technical round, for things like company culture, processes, communities, events, perks and any other non technical or non team/project related info.

So in this chapter let’s focus on a candidate’s questions.

rushing the reverse interview

Often times, out of sheer focus on time efficiency, and keeping the main focus of a technical interview almost exclusively towards the employer’s interest, rather than also the candidate’s, a very common practice is to put any of the candidate’s questions at the very end of the discussion — which is ok, but then to do that in quite an afterthoughtfully-rushed manner — which is less ok.

The common result of planning something like an afterthought, is it also feeling as an afterthought. Definitely not optimal, when this Q&A section does happen like that, and significantly more so, when it is skipped altogether.

So let’s go over some helpful tools, for enabling the reverse interview:

#1. prioritise this higher, by acknowledging its potential impact, and extending the total interview duration

Often times, when a person is looking for a career change they will have more than one interview application thread ongoing.

After going through the hiring process, when more than one of those companies consider that person a great hiring match for them, and only one or some of those companies also took the time and energy to dedicate a slot also for that candidate’s requirements, passions and questions, how likely do you think the person is, to effectively increase their career change risk, and go with one of the companies that did not?

For sure, there would be multiple other factors playing in as well, but supposing all other things are relatively equal or equivalent, this could very well be a heavy point in that candidate’s decision.

Add to that, the other common aspect that once a hiring match is confirmed by an employer, a candidate can be requested to accept or decline an offer in a relatively narrow time frame, and without realistically having enough time to go back and forward with another option they had, to clarify further details there as well.

If we become more mindful of this essential branch in our interview’s information, and its potential effects, we should:

• carefully share this mindset with the rest of the involved parties that plan and participate in our interview
• and if needed, extend the interview’s time slot, so that it allows us to realistically include the time & energy also for a candidate’s questions.

As a nice bonus, even though the goal would be for the candidate to learn more about us, we may find that by enabling that may actually also help us learn even more about the candidate, simply by the nature of their questions, the way they are asked, and any other followup questions, and in turn to help us even further validate that hiring match.

This can be easy to achieve when the rest of the interview is timeboxed properly, but for the rest of the cases, this can drift into the ‘easier said than done’ category. Let’s explore a few more ways to aid with that.

#2. prioritise this higher, by better formalising it

May not seem like much, but I find that one way of prioritising this higher can be to simply label this part of an interview something other than Q&A.

Even if we do this solely for ourselves, or we go a step further and make it official practice with the rest of our interviewing colleagues — before doing the interview, and also when planning the duration of it.

Semantics can help a lot, and naming it differently, as something as plain as ‘candidate questions and requirements’ or a more terse ‘reverse interview’, and then acknowledging it as one of the crucial branches in our interview’s information hierarchy, should inherently signal that we cannot realistically allocate an optional, tiny time slot at the end of this interview for this part.

Applying these first 2 tips should help promote the candidate’s questions higher, towards (even if not fully equal to) the priority of the job description requirements, and should help get this section out of that afterthought isle.

#3. fallback option: plan a separate call

When for any reason, those previous 2 items are not possible, or when they were initially planned, and yet there is somehow not enough time left in an interview, and we do actually still want to pay energy and attention also to this topic, one solution could be to schedule another call for this.

In my [limited] experience, on both sides of an interview, I noticed that due to various reasons, that additional call solely for this purpose seems to rarely happen afterwards. Not never, but still.

I have however also seen this flourish beautifully, and I’ll describe it in #6 bellow.

#4. fallback option: use email

A candidate’s questions can also be done via a subsequent email.

This can work and actually be a fair option, especially if the candidate has no questions at the time of the interview, and also if when they do send out those questions, they require very brief and relatively non personal answers.

If meanwhile, they actually come up with a larger set of questions, or simply questions that are better handled live, then it could help us to schedule another short call to answer them.

One important asterisk here, because the moment we step out of that live discussion and pass this to the asynchronous realm of email, we need to treat it very delicately and promptly, to not risk making it feel rushed or undervalued.

#5. magic

Another option that is even more delicate to pull off, is to directly touch on some of these points also naturally, whenever the candidate brings up a tangent topic, during our initial, technical questions phase.
To let or even encourage them to ask questions right then and there.

This would be highly dependent on the dialogue’s rhythm and the parties’ chemistry, as well as on a candidate’s flow of concisely verbalising questions in between our own technical questions, without deviating too much or too often from our main goal of validating their technical skills.

#6. don’t dismiss the temporarily unanswerables, call for backup

Let’s say that for any reason, we are not able to answer multiple questions coming from a candidate.

Whenever we just do not have that information then and there, especially if we feel that from our perspective we have a potentially great match, in that scenario we should automatically be thinking of colleagues that could be able to provide those answers.

Even more so, I really think we should not be afraid to directly give a quick, friendly teaser of specific colleagues that could help, and let the candidate know that we could set up another call with those specific people, to iron out all of those remaining questions.

Take this hypothetical example:

That’s a bit out of my area, but our colleague Torsten is an ace in that technology. You’ll love talking to him, we could set up another call and invite him as well, so you find out more on topic x.

Clarifying those points for the candidate would be the main goal here.

But this would also potentially come with an added bonus, of not just getting to talk one more time, but for them to meet yet another colleague from our company, and the other way around.

May seem like an inconsequential detail, but I feel that directly announcing names, and transparently pre-planning a call like that on the spot can

• go a long way in actually making that happen, and make the candidate even more curious and excited;
• and indirectly initiate a pre-introduction with a potential future colleague, as well as an early init to their ramp up, should the interview conclude with a match on both sides.

Needless to say, this sort of hyper positive scenario cannot materialize if we treat the whole area as a rushed afterthought, where the candidate is indirectly discouraged to ask.

even more potential surprises

We want to try and create as best of an idea as possible of our role opening, the project and team environment, and of what the candidate also needs to function optimally, not just what we need from them.

Focusing also on the candidate instead of solely on the job description can also bring up topics and abilities that were not even in our initial requirements list, but that would actually be a great addition to our organisation as a whole, not just the initial role opening.

Knowing these things early on, and not only after their first performance review, a year or however later on after they would get hired, can help us better understand and place them in the right team and environment.
And if somehow they would eventually still not fit due to other factors, to know their requirements prehand, for alternative openings.

effortAndGoodEnergy() { return effort, and good energy; }

Thank you for joining me in building a mental model for an interview’s information, this chapter completes that graph.

The lovely paradox that can result from this higher amount of structure, time and energy invested into the process:

• the actual interview will most likely end up feeling significantly more free-flowing and loose
• we would be dedicating close to equal attention also to the candidate’s requirements, passions and questions.

And guess what. Most candidates will also quickly feel that degree of preparation, as well as the time and energy already invested, and will almost always respond with theirs in return, completing that positive energy loop.

I’ve also found out with time that these kind of practices and overall mindset will bring very similar positive results also outside interviews, when leading or just participating to many other kinds of meetings.
Regardless of the specific agenda and outcome, at the end of such meetings, all participants end up even more acquainted; and instead of instead of simply neutral/bored, or worst, discouraged or disappointed — we somehow come out recharged.

Check out the final ingredient in the final chapter! and a fun surprise still pending ^^