Episode 10
Interviewing 101: Tips for interviewees AND interviewers
This week, we have something for both sides of the table, whether you're interviewing for your next job or interviewing candidates for your next hire.
Navigating the interview process can feel like a minefield. How do you follow up? When should you follow up? Have I been ghosted?
And if you're interviewing candidates, you also have a lot to keep in mind, like creating a great candidate experience and running a data-driven process.
Carina and Alison chatted about all things interviewing this week, plus how to answer the all-important question, "If you were a tree, what type would you be."
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Transcript
So we have had quite a few people who
Speaker:are in the process of interviews right now. And this
Speaker:is a weird time of year for a lot of reasons. But right
Speaker:after the first of the year, it seems like there's this big boom. A lot of jobs are posted.
Speaker:And so a lot of people get interviews quite quickly. That actually overwhelms the
Speaker:team. And then things move really slowly. Not to mention, we've got JP Morgan.
Speaker:We've got ridiculous numbers of holidays. And we've got, if you're
Speaker:in the Northeast, snow days and sick days. So it's actually a
Speaker:really messy time of year to move the process forward. I
Speaker:can tell you from a recruiting standpoint, the number of times we
Speaker:actually have to cancel interviews or move them, or how difficult it
Speaker:even is to get them scheduled on our part from
Speaker:the company side, things are moving slowly. It's
Speaker:not like you're going to have your first round with the recruiter, the next day
Speaker:you're going to meet with the hiring manager, and two days later you're going
Speaker:to meet with the full team. That's not a realistic expectation. So
Speaker:the questions that we get quite often are, when should I
Speaker:be following up after an interview? How long should it be? And
Speaker:kind of what does that follow up look like? What is the best way
Speaker:to follow up? And so there's no one size fits all answer because
Speaker:you really have to use your common sense here because it depends on the day of week. And
Speaker:is it a long weekend? And is it JP Morgan week? And there's like a lot of things
Speaker:to note that we talk about as caveats, but in general,
Speaker:I like to recommend a thank you note to
Speaker:anybody you spoke with within 24 hours, a
Speaker:maximum of 24 hours. If you have a conversation with a recruiter or
Speaker:the hiring manager in the morning, send them a thank you note that same day. If
Speaker:it's more toward the end of the day, pushing five o'clock, send it the next morning.
Speaker:Make sure, though, that you are sending a follow-up thank you note that
Speaker:is complimentary, that says, thank you for your time. Thank you
Speaker:so much for telling me about this fascinating thing. And
Speaker:that should come right away with then an open-ended question
Speaker:about the next steps so that they have the
Speaker:Yeah, I think that open-ended question part is really key. Because
Speaker:otherwise, sometimes what we see is someone will say, oh,
Speaker:they didn't reply. And we say, OK, well, show us what you sent
Speaker:them. And there's nothing to reply to. And so you're back in the thank you
Speaker:thing, where it's like, thank you, thank you, thank you. So yeah, perfect. Open-ended
Speaker:questions. Also, don't overstress it,
Speaker:too. Sometimes you just write the thank you
Speaker:thing and send it and you've done your thing and
Speaker:there's no point to agonizing over the timeline of when someone else gets back
Speaker:There are two important things to note with thank you notes. There's probably more
Speaker:than two, but I'm going to note two. Every
Speaker:single interaction you have with a hiring team is important. So
Speaker:the tone and the grammar and the spelling, that all matters.
Speaker:It really, really does. If you can mirror the
Speaker:tone of your interview, if it was a real chatty interview with
Speaker:a chatty hiring manager, make your thank you note in the same type
Speaker:of style. If it was more of a formal interview and
Speaker:the interview team was a little bit more formal, a little bit more staid, and you got
Speaker:the sense like, well, this is more of a formal company, make it
Speaker:a little bit more cordial. However you slice it,
Speaker:though, use a tool like Grammarly to
Speaker:ensure that you have no errors in grammar, spelling,
Speaker:or punctuation, because I don't care if it's chatty or formal, that
Speaker:matters. That matters very deeply. And so that's such
Speaker:an easy thing, especially with the technology we have today. There is no excuse.
Speaker:There is no excuse to send less than a
Speaker:Yeah, I think there's something to unpack there as well. So
Speaker:yes, you definitely want to tailor your tone to how the conversation went. But
Speaker:if you find yourself being like, oh, I'm having to sound so formal because they were so
Speaker:formal and I'm not a formal person, is that an environment for
Speaker:you? True. It's a really good time to reflect on did
Speaker:you actually really like the impression you
Speaker:got? Because if you're having to change your personality to,
Speaker:you know, make an email sound right, maybe it's not right
Speaker:for you. And I'm not saying that's your only point of, you know, thought when
Speaker:you're thinking about, is this the right job? But it's certainly something to think about
Speaker:because the person you presented during that interview and the person you
Speaker:present in the thank you note and the person you present throughout this entire hiring
Speaker:process is the person they expect to show up on
Speaker:the first day of work and to be their colleague. So Just
Speaker:make sure that's in line because I think it is really important that you
Speaker:I love that point so much. We actually had
Speaker:a pretty deep dive on that today during office hours because one
Speaker:of our Accelerator members is in
Speaker:an interview process and had a first interview. So
Speaker:they skipped right past the recruiter and ended up meeting with
Speaker:the department director, which would be their boss. And
Speaker:it was a 45-minute, she called it an exam. It
Speaker:was a 45-minute exam. And she said there was no banter.
Speaker:There was no back and forth. And knowing this person,
Speaker:my first question was, do you want to work for that person? Because
Speaker:she's quite bubbly. So I'm seeing
Speaker:like, OK, we all have had to take exams. But if that's your
Speaker:first interaction with somebody and that's your boss, The question is,
Speaker:is that how they manage, is it always going to be that intense?
Speaker:Maybe it's not going to be, but my advice to her was, even
Speaker:if so, if they're skipping steps in the process, it's a small company, it's not
Speaker:unheard of to get an offer after just speaking with a hiring manager
Speaker:at very small companies. There may not be that many more people in the company to
Speaker:even interview with. It is within your rights to ask
Speaker:for another conversation because you are interviewing them
Speaker:too. Yes. Yeah, because yeah, you're
Speaker:right. You have to be authentic. You have to be comfortable with
Speaker:I mean, I think that's really the key of the whole thing, right, is that show
Speaker:up as the person that you want to be at work. Show up as, you
Speaker:know, the colleague that you want to be and bring that person through your email
Speaker:interactions and through your interviews because Yes, everyone
Speaker:has bad days, but be the person you want to be, right? But
Speaker:don't be someone you're not, because it's not going to work out for
Speaker:you long term. You're not going to like it. You're going to burn out. And
Speaker:it's just not worth it. So I think that's a really key thing. And
Speaker:I think that was good advice you gave that person to reflect on, like,
Speaker:if this is the offer stage next, you need
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. Just knowing her, I want
Speaker:her to be her bubbly self somewhere. That's
Speaker:really important. It's important to me too. And,
Speaker:you know, thinking about how I interact and a lot of the advice I give
Speaker:to candidates when we're workshopping emails that they're going to
Speaker:send or, you know, interactions that they're having, people
Speaker:get really wound up about this follow-up stage and when
Speaker:do I follow up and how do I follow up and all this stuff. And often
Speaker:when I'm helping to write emails, I have to say, well,
Speaker:this is how I'd say it because I would inject like
Speaker:a little bit of humor here, but if that's not you, then don't do it.
Speaker:You know, so for instance, after a long weekend, we,
Speaker:we know because we're on the hiring side. So we see the candidate requests and
Speaker:emails come through. If you have an interview, this is where the common sense
Speaker:piece comes in. If you have an interview on a Thursday before a long weekend, the
Speaker:Friday before a long weekend, everyone's going to be checking out
Speaker:mentally by midday. But before that, they're just trying to get
Speaker:stuff done so that they're done and they can go enjoy their long weekend. That
Speaker:Friday, you're probably not going to hear a whole lot in
Speaker:a meaningful way because nobody's in the right frame of mind to
Speaker:like move candidates forward, get interviews scheduled, all of that. You
Speaker:might, but it's unlikely. And then let's say then the Monday's
Speaker:the holiday. The Tuesday, everyone's just digging out
Speaker:from their long weekend. So the best day to follow up
Speaker:would actually be Wednesday or Thursday of that week. It feels like a
Speaker:long time to you, but that's a long time in regular days.
Speaker:That's not a long time in work days, and that's what we have to really operate on.
Speaker:So then we have people who get really, really upset because they'll
Speaker:say, oh, I made a mistake, and I followed up on Tuesday, and now they're not
Speaker:going to see it, and I don't know what to do. I would reply, and I'd say, well, that
Speaker:probably wasn't the best day to email you. I'm sure this got buried under 5 million emails.
Speaker:I'm just popping this to the top of your inbox. That's the way
Speaker:I would handle it, but that's totally my style. And to your point, you
Speaker:I want to go back to something you said about Grammarly. I
Speaker:think that's a really good point. And here's what I would think
Speaker:about. If you are like, I'm just going to fire off this thank you note from my
Speaker:iPhone and it doesn't even matter because I did the thank you note thing, check the button, whatever.
Speaker:Just think about that that interaction, that email you send is
Speaker:how people are going to see you as a colleague. So if you do it really fast and
Speaker:they're spelling errors and it doesn't really make sense, that's not
Speaker:necessarily someone I want on my team because I want to know that things are done correctly and
Speaker:with some thought and well done.
Speaker:So try to approach things from that thing too. Like,
Speaker:yes, it takes a little more work, but you are really showing the level
Speaker:of work and quality that you're going to bring to the job. So don't
Speaker:Ultimately, we're making drugs. That's
Speaker:what biotech is doing. We are making things that will go
Speaker:into patients. And so the level of detail expected
Speaker:of that, if we're thinking about filing INDs and pushing
Speaker:things into the clinic and all of that, Yeah, it's
Speaker:important. Detail matters. And so every interaction until they
Speaker:get to know you really, really well, and they might know like, oh, well, she's on
Speaker:vacation and firing off a quick email. So that makes sense. But
Speaker:you don't get that privilege until you have shown who you are
Speaker:and that on a day to day basis, you are that detail oriented.
Speaker:You care that deeply. Then you
Speaker:earn the right to have the occasional silly email that has the spelling error
Speaker:Everyone makes mistakes. And of course, like, you know, we're all in Slack and
Speaker:I don't always capitalize everything in Slack. Sometimes
Speaker:you're just firing things off. But when push
Speaker:comes to shove, my whole team knows that when something important is going
Speaker:out, I'm going to be reviewing it and we're going to be running it through Grammarly. And
Speaker:I'll probably even have someone else look at it because Grammarly is great.
Speaker:There's no substitute for someone else reading it and being like, I don't understand what
Speaker:you're saying here. So just keep that in mind. These
Speaker:little small things, they do make big impressions. So
Speaker:Karina, have you ever reached out
Speaker:to a candidate and things started off really, really well. And
Speaker:then they just fell apart because like maybe their emails got
Speaker:really weird or maybe you had a super strange interaction and you're like, this is bizarre.
Speaker:What's happening here? Or have you gotten someone almost to the end and
Speaker:So, so many. Really? Yeah. It's interesting
Speaker:because I, I've used this a few times now, but like, Job
Speaker:interviews are a bit like dating, right? And so
Speaker:you're going to see people over multiple interactions.
Speaker:That's why we structure interviews the way we do. There's multiple
Speaker:points where you're going to interact with people at the company. And If
Speaker:you are putting on some sort of a false personality, it's
Speaker:likely to come out at some point, right? Even if it's an accident that,
Speaker:you know, maybe the weird interaction we got was a
Speaker:result of something that was out of your control. It's going
Speaker:to just raise that little pink flag. It's like, is this person real?
Speaker:Are they bringing their authentic self to this? So
Speaker:yeah, every interaction ends up being a data point. And
Speaker:You know, that's super interesting too, especially when people
Speaker:are looking at remote jobs, I think. There
Speaker:is a different dynamic to interviewing in person, I
Speaker:feel personally, than there is to doing everything remotely,
Speaker:where it feels like you're still not completely
Speaker:reading the room and everything. So every interaction really does have that much more
Speaker:weight. Every email is a little bit more like, okay, this is my
Speaker:only correspondence with this person. I'm not going to meet them in the parking lot
Speaker:and bring them in the building and have that casual chitchat. So here we
Speaker:Yeah. That's a really good point. We have fewer
Speaker:data points in this online world than we would in
Speaker:the pre-pandemic world. We used to fly candidates out
Speaker:all the time for interviews. They might have an interview with
Speaker:me on the phone, and then they might have an interview with
Speaker:the hiring manager on the phone, not Zoom, on the phone. We
Speaker:weren't doing Zoom. And then we would fly candidates out
Speaker:if they weren't local to meet the whole team in person and make
Speaker:a whole day of it, including lunch. Like it was a
Speaker:whole thing. We don't do that anymore. And so there are so
Speaker:many fewer data points to get that read on people. So
Speaker:you, you really have to think about pretty critically what
Speaker:image you're putting out during your interview. You want it to be authentic, but you also
Speaker:want it to be professional and in line with
Speaker:the other things that you're. that are happening in your interview. So
Speaker:if you send a bunch of really good emails, lots of professional emails,
Speaker:no spelling mistakes, and then suddenly out of nowhere, this
Speaker:weird email that doesn't make any sense, you know, terrible
Speaker:You know, it's interesting. I'm sure most people have heard this and
Speaker:it is just good advice. So like take this and run with it. But
Speaker:the way that we used to talk about hiring in
Speaker:previous companies was how did they act
Speaker:with the first person they met? So if you are rude to
Speaker:the person sitting at the reception desk, that would be the first question
Speaker:I asked anyone, you know, right after we interviewed someone,
Speaker:I'd go out and say, How were they? And sometimes for a lot
Speaker:of my career, I was that person. I'd be like, they were great. Or I'd be like, oh, they were horribly
Speaker:rude. And that dictated everything. It did not matter what
Speaker:the response was after that. Like if they were like, they could have been the best
Speaker:hire, but if they were rude to the people who they thought didn't
Speaker:matter in their interview. That shows you everything
Speaker:you need to know. So that's another data point that, you know, no
Speaker:matter who you're interacting with, your initial phone screener has
Speaker:a lot of sway. If they're like, they weren't polite and they were really
Speaker:rude. Well, that's pretty
Speaker:We just let a candidate go today because they were not
Speaker:professional on the phone with one of our recruiters. We're
Speaker:not sending them through to, I mean, I'm sure
Speaker:that they were thinking, well, this is just the recruiter screen. It
Speaker:does not matter. No, they will never be
Speaker:seen by the hiring manager because we ultimately don't
Speaker:feel that they're a fit for the company because that's not the culture
Speaker:I think though it goes the other way, right? If you are interviewing
Speaker:with a company. and you're getting weird signals
Speaker:from their team, those are data
Speaker:points for you as well. It's the same thing. You're not spending a ton
Speaker:of time interviewing. You're not meeting everybody at the company. You're
Speaker:not getting to sit down and have a meal with people necessarily anymore. So
Speaker:you don't have a lot of data points to go on either. True. So
Speaker:it's also within your rights to interview them back. So
Speaker:At what point do you start getting pink to glaring
Speaker:red flags when someone's like, oh yeah, I've been on eight
Speaker:interviews with the same company? Or I've
Speaker:had to do this crazy project for free because they want to see my
Speaker:work. Like, where are you kind of like, oh boy, this is not looking
Speaker:One thing that we see more inexperienced hiring
Speaker:managers want to do often is basically
Speaker:they don't trust themselves to make a decision. So they want everybody in
Speaker:the company to sort of meet this person, back them up on it.
Speaker:and it becomes a really disjointed process. Just because now
Speaker:we can do things through Zoom doesn't mean we should spread the interview out
Speaker:over days and days and days. It's still emotionally
Speaker:and mentally draining to be interviewed. It
Speaker:doesn't matter if it's on site or on Zoom. It's probably a little bit
Speaker:less draining on Zoom, but You
Speaker:still have that anxiety, that workup, that all of that. And
Speaker:if you spread that over multiple days, that is hard. It's hard for
Speaker:candidates and they don't like it. We've had that feedback specifically
Speaker:from many different candidates. They don't like it. So it is still advisable
Speaker:to keep the interview team small. to keep it tight because
Speaker:really good candidates that are in high demand, they have
Speaker:choices and they're interviewing you. And if
Speaker:the only data points they have about your company are that the interview feels really
Speaker:disorganized, they have to come back for lots of different interviews, they're
Speaker:on different days, sometimes they get moved or canceled, what are
Speaker:they going to think about the company? The only data points they have are that your
Speaker:interview process was terrible. Are they going to think you're
Speaker:an organized company, a good company to work for? It's unlikely.
Speaker:So that is huge. The second thing
Speaker:that you brought up was doing projects. We've had some
Speaker:clients before ask us to put together what they
Speaker:call case study interviews, and this in principle is
Speaker:okay for some roles. But where it crosses into
Speaker:not being okay is if we are asking candidates to
Speaker:do a case study on actual work at the company that
Speaker:could be used to further the company's interests for
Speaker:free. That is not something that you should be
Speaker:doing, and if you are asked to do that, please jump into the Slack community and
Speaker:workshop that with us. We are happy to answer questions about how to turn down an
Speaker:interview like that politely. But if you get
Speaker:the suspicion that you're basically being asked to solve an
Speaker:engineering problem for a company, that's probably
Speaker:I would much prefer to go on site and meet people. I'm just
Speaker:more drawn to being in person with people. And
Speaker:so there's that element, too, that, like, it's exhausting no
Speaker:matter who you are. And it is really, like, I
Speaker:feel like it's personality dependent to an extent. But it's
Speaker:just, just don't do it. Just don't make anyone sit
Speaker:We revamped a process recently where they
Speaker:had 13 people meeting with a candidate one-on-one.
Speaker:Oh. They did it. I know. They
Speaker:did it over a period usually of four or
Speaker:five different days because they
Speaker:couldn't get all 13 people who were mostly remote or hybrid to
Speaker:be able to coordinate on a certain day or time. That's
Speaker:just really tough. I don't care who you are. That is grueling. When
Speaker:we started the process, we were working with some candidates that were working
Speaker:through that process already. And we basically had
Speaker:to go back to the company and say, this is the feedback we're getting. These candidates are
Speaker:leaving the process because of this. I don't want to
Speaker:see more than eight people throughout an entire process, which includes HR
Speaker:The thing is, is that everyone has lives, right? You might be
Speaker:looking for a job, but you're probably not just sitting there like being like, dude, dude, dude, I'm
Speaker:totally available for interviews all the time. I mean, think about the childcare
Speaker:element. If you're asking someone to do 13 interviews and
Speaker:or if they are employed and you're asking them to step away from their job 13 times,
Speaker:It is, in fact, pretty common practice with smaller
Speaker:companies. What happens, it's pretty natural. You have
Speaker:these really tiny companies, right, where it's actually fine to have
Speaker:somebody meet with everybody at the company because they're six
Speaker:people or eight people. It's a tiny company. Well, then the company grows
Speaker:and they don't want to exclude someone from the process. And then pretty soon you've
Speaker:got your 13 people at the company, your 15 people at the company. They
Speaker:don't want to exclude anybody. But there is a point where you
Speaker:just have to say, no, who is actually pertinent to making this decision? And
Speaker:in the interest of time, who really needs to attend and just triage
Speaker:it down. And you know what? The employees are not going to feel like
Speaker:they're excluded. They're probably burnt out from doing so many interviews, too. Everyone
Speaker:I actually think that's a super interesting a psychological thing
Speaker:as well. If you're an employee and you're not included in the interview, okay, they hired
Speaker:someone and you don't agree with it, you don't get along with them, well, like, whatever, you didn't weigh in on
Speaker:that. So that was the way the cards were dealt. But
Speaker:how bad is it if you're like, no, I really don't want to work with
Speaker:this person, or like, no, I don't think they have the skills, or X, Y, Z, and
Speaker:the company disregards that feedback? Because then you
Speaker:are sort of in a position of being like, well, I had to take all this time to interview this person, no one
Speaker:even listened to my feedback, And here we are. So I
Speaker:think the smaller interview team is essential for several
Speaker:reasons. One of them is you have too many cooks in the kitchen, then you're going to have
Speaker:We can also mitigate that with creating a more scientific
Speaker:interview process. And it's really interesting to me how a bunch
Speaker:of scientists at a company typically don't treat
Speaker:the interview process scientifically at all. And so one of
Speaker:the things we like to do when we start working with a company is create
Speaker:a scorecard system where everybody in total isolation fills
Speaker:out a scorecard with their thoughts and their feelings about a candidate's fitness. And
Speaker:then after everybody's filled those out, then compare.
Speaker:What we see often, which if you think about it, we're talking about
Speaker:a bunch of scientists. They would never do this in an experiment. They
Speaker:would never do this. But they all interview candidates.
Speaker:They sometimes capture notes. They chit chat in the hallway about it. And
Speaker:then there's this process of groupthink that
Speaker:happens because people are starting to have these sidebar conversations before
Speaker:actual data has been analyzed. It's really
Speaker:fascinating and something that I have always been just so confused
Speaker:about. And then we introduced scorecards and they're like, oh yeah, this is a much
Speaker:better way to do it. Well, you analyze your data like this.
Speaker:That is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker:it's true. There's a lot of ways to mitigate a lot
Speaker:of those pitfalls, but you kind of need someone who knows how
Speaker:Well, if you're listening to this podcast and you are going to hire
Speaker:some folks for your team, you can do a really basic, very
Speaker:rudimentary scorecard using Google Forms. You
Speaker:don't have to have a fancy applicant tracking system if you're not going public anytime
Speaker:soon. You can absolutely do this in an easy way. and
Speaker:collect that data and then have a good sit down with the blinded data
Speaker:and have people come forward with their thoughts. But
Speaker:after seeing the data, kind of see the data first. It's interesting, too,
Speaker:when you point out, you know, the one outlier that maybe doesn't like the candidate,
Speaker:they don't want to hire that candidate. Often when they
Speaker:see raw data where it's like, okay, well, they were a
Speaker:four and a half star on this, on this, and
Speaker:there were, let's say there were 13 people and they were the one person who
Speaker:marked him a one star and everyone else wrote, marked him a five star. That
Speaker:is a lot more compelling to them usually than just
Speaker:being overruled, but it's more of just like an argument. If
Speaker:Yeah, well, you're taking the personality out of it, right? Like, going
Speaker:back to your point, not everyone is going to like each other. That is just human
Speaker:nature. But if you can't sit down and actually say, these
Speaker:are the things that are pertinent to the job and can this person do
Speaker:it and take the personality out of it, to an extent, I mean, you still have
Speaker:to be a good person that people want to work with and be a nice colleague,
Speaker:but you know, you can accomplish those things without being best friends with everybody.
Speaker:And so I think that is really interesting. I could see that being super effective
Speaker:It really is. Yeah. Before we revamp some processes with
Speaker:previous clients. We heard feedback as
Speaker:we were sort of starting up, and I would ask, well, what are your pain points with
Speaker:the interview process? And often it came down to
Speaker:this feedback session, which was a completely unformatted feedback session where
Speaker:people had talked to each other earlier, formed their little opinions, formed little
Speaker:clicks even, came in and brought that to this feedback session, which then
Speaker:it's, I mean, that's not useful. Nobody finds that useful. And
Speaker:I would hear things like, somebody would come and be like,
Speaker:well, I didn't like their shirt. Somebody said that they
Speaker:didn't like someone's shirt because it had a sparkle, like a
Speaker:sparkly thing on the side, which I'm interpreting as an embellishment,
Speaker:probably. Wow. How is that pertinent
Speaker:in any way, shape, or form to their ability to perform the
Speaker:job? So this is where we take that
Speaker:element out of this process. And it's so easy to
Speaker:do. It's just a matter of standardizing it. So if you are ever
Speaker:confused about that, again, our Slack community, we do
Speaker:a lot of work with job seekers, but if you're hiring somebody, come
Speaker:in and ask us about that too. We love to talk about best practices
Speaker:for hiring, and we can give you some really easy tips and even some templates
Speaker:and things like that. I just got together, an interview cheat
Speaker:sheet for a client. It has almost 200 behavioral-based
Speaker:interview questions on anything you could want to interview for.
Speaker:And I just have this in our drive. So if you're interviewing
Speaker:people, jump in our Slack community and ask for that, because that is gold. That
Speaker:Here's a thought. Can we also share that with Accelerator members
Speaker:Already done. Yeah, that's actually in our interview module. Yep,
Speaker:they should have no trouble, although it's a little overwhelming if you're like, oh, these 200 questions.
Speaker:The nice thing, though, is that there are themes, right?
Speaker:And so the questions are behavioral-based questions, which means you would provide
Speaker:a story to go along with your answer. And
Speaker:I can't actually imagine the need for more than about five stories.
Speaker:Because the themes for those questions tend to
Speaker:circulate around detail-oriented, communication,
Speaker:teamwork, like there's a lot of the same themes. And so as long as you're pulling
Speaker:together stories that paint those types of pictures, you
Speaker:should be fine. They might ask you about teamwork and you'd
Speaker:prepared a story about dealing with a challenging colleague, but that actually
Speaker:is okay. You can pull it back to teamwork, right? There's a
Speaker:lot of ways that you can mitigate the work that you might think that
Speaker:Yeah, I think that's the whole thing. If you practice a few of them, it's
Speaker:in your brain. It's more just thinking about like on the fly, it's so hard
Speaker:to be like, oh, when did I work with a difficult colleague? And
Speaker:then you just sit there silently, and every second feels so long. But
Speaker:if you're like, oh, yeah, I kind of knew I should pull one of these out and one of these. And
Speaker:at least then you've kind of made your brain go back in time as well, which I think is
Speaker:And humans love stories. We connect over stories.
Speaker:Even if you're not asked a behavioral-based interview question, there's
Speaker:often a lot of wiggle room in your answers to
Speaker:bring in a story. So one of our members asked
Speaker:how they would respond to a question, which is
Speaker:just a terrible question, but what's your greatest weakness? Which we almost
Speaker:never hear that question in interviews, but that's the question everyone
Speaker:fears because we've been told like, Oh,
Speaker:just say, like, I work too hard or something. Like, no, that's not,
Speaker:I'm a perfectionist. Like, I am so detail oriented. I
Speaker:mean, it's such a bad question. It's a bad question. And no one's going to be like, oh,
Speaker:I am like, I don't know. I swear like a sailor, like
Speaker:no one's saying that. I mean, maybe they are. I guess if
Speaker:we're telling people to bring your authentic self, I guess you could throw it out there, but don't.
Speaker:My example today for the Accelerator member, she's
Speaker:an immunologist. And I was like, well, it's not like you're going to come out and say, like,
Speaker:I don't know immunology. It's a terrible question. I think
Speaker:there's a way, usually, to turn around those questions,
Speaker:even if they are kind of bad questions, to pull in
Speaker:a story and almost turn it into a star-based question.
Speaker:So my example for that is, for me, And
Speaker:this is how I would even answer the question. I am aware of a weakness of mine.
Speaker:I work on it all the time because it's something that's very present. I
Speaker:generate a lot of ideas and I overwhelm my
Speaker:team members with that because I will just,
Speaker:in my ideation, I will throw out ideas. And because I
Speaker:lead a team, some team members get stressed out about that. They want
Speaker:to go into action. start enacting those ideas, but I've
Speaker:not provided any clear framework for whether they're good ideas,
Speaker:bad ideas, and frankly, many of them should not see the light of day, right?
Speaker:So the way I have trained myself to mitigate this
Speaker:is I try to write things down now, and I try and
Speaker:sit on them for 24 hours. And then a lot of
Speaker:them get crossed off my list. But the ones that I do feel are
Speaker:good, I want to provide a little more context and framework before
Speaker:I just throw them out in a meeting. This is something I work on constantly. I
Speaker:know it's a problem. And it's something that I think is also a
Speaker:strength of mine, but in the wrong context can really overwhelm a
Speaker:But you see how I can take that terrible question and sort
Speaker:of bring in a bit of a story. It's not a full story, but
Speaker:it's a scenario. And it also shows my thought process. Here
Speaker:are the steps I've taken. So in her case, I
Speaker:advised her to think back to something she actually learned from
Speaker:her last job, something that was a weakness. that she
Speaker:was aware of. One thing I noticed in my last position was
Speaker:that I was weak in X area, so I took XYZ steps to
Speaker:improve. I'm still working on it. It's something I continually want
Speaker:to work toward, but I am and this is what I'm doing. And so
Speaker:Yeah, I think the ownership piece of that is what is like just super
Speaker:critical. People love when you just say, yeah, I know and I own
Speaker:this aspect of it and then following it up exactly like you
Speaker:said, these are the steps I'm taking. No one is perfect
Speaker:and I think very few people are actually really good at delineating
Speaker:and owning their weaknesses in a way that you know, really shows
Speaker:growth. Yeah. So I think that's a perfect answer. It's a lot better than
Speaker:the time I interviewed at a company and I was asked what type of a tree
Speaker:I would be. Oh, I know like four trees. I
Speaker:think I said a palm tree because I like like the heat and being in Florida, which like the
Speaker:job was in Massachusetts. So they're probably like, oh, this isn't going to work out
Speaker:But that's a really interesting question
Speaker:So early on, there was a client that
Speaker:liked to ask wacky questions and that was something
Speaker:I challenged them on was like, what's the utility of this question? They
Speaker:were like, well, we just want to see how creative someone's answer is. Okay,
Speaker:but we're a biotech. That's right.
Speaker:I mean. Fine, but expect candidates
Speaker:to be a little put off by that because you
Speaker:can understand, even if it's a bad question, you can understand the
Speaker:question, what's your greatest weakness? You can understand that they're trying to understand
Speaker:something about you. The palm tree or the tree question, I don't know.
Speaker:I mean, basically what I told them is that I only know four types of trees. I
Speaker:was like, my tree knowledge is like, I don't know, Christmas tree, a
Speaker:palm tree, and then a maple? I don't know. I'm kind of like
Speaker:grasping here. So clearly they knew. And I wasn't
Speaker:Yeah. They're nothing to do with trees. I'm married to a woodworker and I
Speaker:would not be able to answer that question. I have no idea. I have no idea.
Speaker:He's always like, I found the coolest tree. I'm like, cool. I
Speaker:have no idea what type of tree. I could not walk outside and tell you what trees
Speaker:Maybe that's my greatest weakness. I am very poorly educated on
Speaker:I would say that's a huge weakness and something you should work on. Definitely affects
