Trust your emotional intelligence to hire the best people
You can build 100 questions based on books you have read and research you have done on hiring but, when it comes to being sat face to face with someone its all about EQ.
Bringing the right people into a business is hard, and its also one of the most important tasks you will face when trying to grow. Processes can be created and I am by no means suggesting that you don’t do some due diligence when you are hiring a new team member but for everything that is good and pure, listen to your gut!
Your company is a living thing, it has a culture and it has a team so bringing someone new in means that its vital they align with your core values. If you are not naturally a gut kind of person you can list out qualities or values that your company believes in and then steer the interview down a conversational path that is likely to invoke the emotional response you are looking for.
One of the key things I try and identify when hiring people is empathy, I place a lot of value on this. Depending on how the conversation is going I will try to ask a question like:
What would you do if a colleague was stuck on a problem and you have the answer that could solve it for them?
Normally regardless of whether the interviewee has the empathy quality they will likely answer with something like:
I would help go and help them to solve the problem.
Thats great, but its clear that if the interviewee were to say “I would just carry on with my work, they will figure it out” they are not a good fit, and they recognise that so would give the first answer. Assuming the answer is that they would help I then move on to something like:
Great, so you have helped that person and one hour later they come over to you and say “can you show me how to solve that problem again, I forgot what you did”.
This intensifies the situation and brings in another emotion, patience. I will repeat this step a few times even asking “what would you do if you had explained twice to the person how to solve the problem but, two days later they come and sheepishly ask again how to solve the same issue”. By this point I will have gained in some way, an insight into this persons qualities and personality and that will help me understand whether they are the right person or not.
Do you have a specific way of interviewing candidates, or have you been in an awkward interview? I would love to hear your experiences : )
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