I’m trying to do stuff to improve EA hiring [1, 2, 3, 4?, 5?, more coming], so first of all Hi!
I like this post and plan to recommend it to others,
I have small disagreements that I’ll write here kind of as an excuse to make conversation:
You said:
Put candidates at ease by asking ‘why do you want this job?’
I talk to lots of candidates, so from their perspective I can share that questions like this are often interpreted as “I need to impress the interviewer with my answer”, especially in the application itself, but I assume also in interviews.
You said:
You can also use interviewees’ answers to know what to highlight about the job—for example, if they say that they want the job because they love trying to solve complex problems, you can emphasize the problem-solving aspects of the role.
Continuing what I said before—you might be fitting your answers to how the candidate tried to impress you.
I suggest an alternative to both of these:
Something like “Do you have questions for us? This is supposed to be an opportunity for me to help you with things you’re worried about, things you’re not sure about regarding our company or how we work, and it’s not a test or an interview question where you’re supposed to impress us, I hope you’ll ask what you actually care about” [phrased in your style, if you don’t like mine]
Part of why I’m saying this is that lots of candidates do have lots of uncertainties that make them afraid to even apply to a “wrong” company. A common piece of advice I give candidates is “ask the recruiter” [instead of, for example, researching ‘what is it like to work in an EA org’ before they apply to anything]. So I think many would appreciate the opportunity.
Reminder that I really like your post and it also seems like you look at hiring from a different direction than I do, which is always interesting!
Hey!
I’m trying to do stuff to improve EA hiring [1, 2, 3, 4?, 5?, more coming], so first of all Hi!
I like this post and plan to recommend it to others,
I have small disagreements that I’ll write here kind of as an excuse to make conversation:
You said:
I talk to lots of candidates, so from their perspective I can share that questions like this are often interpreted as “I need to impress the interviewer with my answer”, especially in the application itself, but I assume also in interviews.
You said:
Continuing what I said before—you might be fitting your answers to how the candidate tried to impress you.
I suggest an alternative to both of these:
Something like “Do you have questions for us? This is supposed to be an opportunity for me to help you with things you’re worried about, things you’re not sure about regarding our company or how we work, and it’s not a test or an interview question where you’re supposed to impress us, I hope you’ll ask what you actually care about” [phrased in your style, if you don’t like mine]
Part of why I’m saying this is that lots of candidates do have lots of uncertainties that make them afraid to even apply to a “wrong” company. A common piece of advice I give candidates is “ask the recruiter” [instead of, for example, researching ‘what is it like to work in an EA org’ before they apply to anything]. So I think many would appreciate the opportunity.
Reminder that I really like your post and it also seems like you look at hiring from a different direction than I do, which is always interesting!
:)