Startup Job Interviews
3 lessons on conducting good interviews. From someone who has attended terrible job interviews.
As I wait outside the front door that leads to the HQ of London’s hottest new AirBnB management start up, Airsorted, I am trying hard to fill the gaps of information left out regarding my impending interview for a role in their sales team. With no preliminary interview over the phone to answer basic questions about the role and the interview process, I was about to receive my first surprise (As would the other 10 candidates that I would apparently be doing a group interview with.)
This brings me to Lesson 1. Actually, it should be so obvious that we’re calling it Lesson 0.5. If you’re going to be holding a group interview, tell the candidates. With proper warning provided, group interviews are a great way to assess whether candidates are confident communicators, personable, approachable and persuasive. All valuable skills for a salesperson. With no prior warning, group interviews are a great way to generate anxiety, suppress talent and confuse otherwise skilled candidates.
As I look around the small meeting room we’d been crammed into, a few things strike me. Firstly, while it’s never a good idea to hold group interviews in a tiny meeting room, doing so in mid-summer shouldn’t be legal (I haven’t decided if I’m serious yet).
The second thing I notice is that we are being left to wait in the sweltering meeting room, while our assessors stand outside with notepads, observing our ability to exchange formalities while confused and rapidly dehydrating. Annoyed by the prospect of facing yet another poorly organised startup interview, I am failing this first assessment.
The 3 people that will be assessing us enter the room. Their average age seems to be around 22. As a 22 year old myself (at the time), I realise this may explain the lack of proper organisation so far. It would also explain the mess of an interview that was waiting for us around the corner.
A hat, filled with pieces of paper, is placed in the middle of the table. “You are each to pick a name out of the hat, research the company that is named on your paper, and give a short presentation about the business”. We’re on task 1 and the instructions are already unclear; bad news for those who went first. After 3 presentations which just recited the tag lines of their respective businesses, the 4th candidate stands up and delivers his presentation as more of a pitch than as a summary. Hanging heads immediately make it clear that the first 3 candidates, through no fault of their own, have been outgunned by a new approach that was quickly adopted by the remaining candidates.
This brings me to Lesson 1. Make the instructions clear. Always. In this case, the instructions weren’t unclear, they were wrong, or at least the first 3 candidates getting sent home for “just describing” the businesses, exactly as they had been asked to do, would suggest that.
After 2 hours of melting to the sound of business summaries and half-hearted pitches, we are all sent out for ‘lunch’, unsurprisingly not provided by the company. They specifically suggest that we should get lunch as a group, a weird proposition considering they then called us one by one to let us know if we’d progressed to the next stage. This made the lunch more awkward than the interview; impressive. It is also cruel to tell candidates they wouldn’t be progressing over the phone, let alone while they were with the rest of the group.
This makes Lesson 2 quite obvious. Treat candidates not only with respect, but with the same effort and courtesy that they treat the interview and the business. They have all travelled to attend a sh*t show, the least you can do is tell them the verdict in person. Don’t treat candidates as if they are contestants on a gameshow.
Unfortunately, I made it through to the next stage. I finished the hour-long group lunch, after the , and was told I have to wait another 2 hours until I could be interviewed individually. I won’t waste any time in telling you Lesson 3. Don’t waste your candidate’s time. You want to hire someone quickly, that’s great! That doesn’t give you the right to make candidates attend a full day of interviewing without any prior warning.
This brings us to the individual interviews. We’ve all seen it in movies, “sell me this pen!”. I never thought an interviewer would actually wield this questionable task, and to their credit, they did jazz it up a little. “I have a purple pen that costs £3, you have a red and a green pen that cost £2.50 each. Sell me the green and red pen.” I’ll admit this is objective, but questions like this are a quick way to make yourself look like you’ve never conducted an interview.
Next up, “Pretend you’re working in a phone store. Sell me my phone.” I honestly should have walked out when I realised the interview would consist almost entirely of “sell me this” questions. At no point was the interview conversational. I appreciate that the company wanted to put pressure on the candidates with presentations and sales pitches but this has to be balanced with calm, informative discussion about the role.
That brings me on to Lesson 3. If you treat candidates as if they need you, and you don’t need them, you end up with the kind of Glassdoor Reviews that this business suffers from. Take the time to give the candidate lots of information about the role before dragging them, completely clueless, into a full-day interview. Especially one being conducted by employees who clearly have little experience in conducting interviews.
Anyway. Food for thought.