What to ask a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ candidate in an interview
By Mike Ross, founder of Juniper and co-founder of Vocaprep.com
The question to ask
My most popular LinkedIn article so far was on how to attract ‘Swiss Army Knives’ — people who have a wide variety of skills and can adapt to whatever you throw at them. What a lot of folks have asked in response to that piece is ‘how do you find these people?’ The first step is posting ‘challenges not roles’ as discussed previously, but once they apply you have to know how to spot the Swiss Army Knives in the interview, and convince them that your organization is a great place to work in the process.
Why this question matters
Interviews are tricky things. As an interviewer I’m trying to understand who the person in front of me really is, beyond their skills, experience, etc. I want to know what makes them tick. But I’m also trying to reveal company culture and values in the process — putting the organization’s best foot forward, showing what makes us a great place to work and what is important and meaningful to us. So I need questions that provide candidates with a chance to reveal themselves in a way that isn’t too easy or too confrontational. What I’ve found is that the simple question “What brings you joy?” is a great way to dig into who they really are, while also forcing me to reveal truths about what we’re building and why. But it is a challenging question — both for the interviewee and the organization.
“What brings you joy?” works well because it goes beyond what folks are passionate about or what they are good at, combining the two in an important way. The concept of passion at work is overused these days, with a confusing array of books, articles and podcasts on the subject out there. Conversely, what candidates are good at is important, but if they don’t enjoy being good at it, then they won’t stay good at it for long and won’t bring the best of themselves to the organization. Lastly, if they don’t find joy in their work, they won’t be a lot of fun to be around.
Joy is also often a surprising question for an interviewee. It’s not a threatening question like “what’s your greatest weakness” or “why should we hire you” — especially if you make it clear that you’re really interested in (and willing to act on) their answer. The fact that you are asking this question should show applicants that you care about them. The real them. Not the fake, mask-wearing self that they think they need to bring to their job interviews, but the actual person that lies beneath.
What you should look for
Perhaps most usefully for an interviewer, candidates probably haven’t been asked it many times before (and I doubt that they’ll read this post), so they are more likely to be honest and truthful, without a practiced or canned answer.
Be prepared to deliver
There isn’t any one ‘right’ answer to this question, but a Swiss Army Knife candidate will often speak of a desire to learn and discovering new things and to be challenged and overcome those challenges. They like a wide variety of subjects, but perhaps have a functional type of work that they like to do. Most importantly, they will answer honestly and transparently (even if they are a little taken aback by it).
Now that you know what brings your applicant joy, you have to decide whether that fits with what your organization needs now and is likely to need in the future. Can you feed that joy? Not necessarily 100% of their time, but if they aren’t given significant opportunities to work on these things, they’ll be unhappy and less productive than they could be. Be creative about this — if you really like the candidate maybe even try to find a new challenge that might meet what she needs/is looking for.
Know that it may change
Last summer we were looking for an intern to help us with business development. Interviewing one amazing candidate we learned that what brought her joy was research and writing. Yes, we needed a business developer, but she was a true Swiss Army Knife and so we decided to move up a writing project that had been on the back burner and have her spend half her time on that, while spending the other half on our BD needs.
What about you?
Few of us, if any, could give a perfect answer when asked about our joy. Especially as most of us don’t think about this that much and don’t know ourselves enough for a perfect answer. Even if we did the answer to this question is likely to evolve over time. That’s ok. Going back to the previous article, this is why hiring someone based on a particular role or skill set isn’t ideal. Hiring based on the ability to adapt allows room for this growth/change and having the commitment as an organization to helping them find that joy is a crucial part in keeping people motivated and engaged.
Even if you’re not an interviewer or an interviewee, this is an important question to think about and answer for yourself. What brings you joy? And do you have the chance to realize that in your day to day?
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on May 2, 2018.
