The Interview Question You Should Always Ask
blogs.harvardbusiness.org
blogs.harvardbusiness.org
After you have narrowed the pool of applicants down to those with the skills, experience, and knowledge to do the job, ask each candidate one question:
What do you do in your spare time? [...]
people are often successful not despite their dysfunctions but because of them. Obsessions are one of the greatest telltale signs of success. Understand a person's obsessions and you will understand her natural motivation. The thing for which she would walk to the end of the earth.
IANAL, but I've heard warnings that this question might be illegal since (a) it isn't directly related to an applicant's ability to do a job, and (b) it is likely to reveal information about the applicant's marital status, children or lack thereof, ethnicity, and/or religion.
Illegal: Are you a U.S. citizen? Where were your parents born? What is your native language?
Legal: Are you authorized to work in the U.S.? What languages do you speak?
Illegal: Are you married? Do you have, or plan to have children? Have you ever been divorced? What do you do for child care?
Legal: Are you willing to relocate? Are you willing and able to put in the amount of overtime and/or travel the position requires?
Illegal: Are you a U.S. citizen? What is your religion? Are you practicing?
Legal: Does your religious affiliation, if any, interfere with your working in this position?
Illegal: How old are you?
Legal: Are you over 18?
The very first interview question I ask is "Tell me about yourself".
This is kind of a diversion from the real discussion. It's unlikely that anyone reading this board can legally ask interviewees about their citizenship.
In all of the examples you give, the "legal" question is askking something directly relevant to whether the applicant is able to perform a job. What someone does with their free time may give you some insight into how well they would do a job, but it's far less directly connected.
* Marital or family status (ask a working mother about this one if you want your blood to boil)
* Age, apart from legality to work
* Sex or, in most places, sexual orientation
* Citizenship, ancestry, race, or national origin, apart from legality to work
* Disabilities of any kind
* Home address
Most questions that would be reasonable in normal conversation are OK in a US interview, so long as they don't pertain directly or indirectly to "race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age".
You are not strictly limited to questions that directly pertain to a candidate's ability to do the job. In most private business settings, you can legally choose not to hire someone for any number of subjective reasons. Not staying up late to work on open source projects is certainly one of them.
On the other hand, if you have a strong preference for someone who codes in their spare time, and you care about not being a douche, you should mention that preference in your job requirements. It's not cool to waste people's time.
Correct. It is possible to be authorized to work in the United States without being a citizen. Asking about citizenship directly can be illegal because it can be a proxy for excluding recent immigrants who have green cards (permanent residency status) but not citizenship.
The problem here is this theory completely dismisses the need for diversity in a company. In my experience the very worst performing companies are ones that are packed with clones of their founder. Because no matter how gifted their founder might be he can’t know/do everything. So in the end companies with people who are identical end up with a very limited set of skills.
Building a company is like building a baseball team. Just as your first baseman is going to have a completely different set of skills than your outfielder a programming lead (who should be obsessive) is going to have a completely different set of skills than a marketing manager (a job that generally benefits from someone who goes out a parties at night).
b) Building a company is like building a baseball team...
Which is pretty much exactly what the article says:
What if you were hiring a receptionist? What spare-time activities would suggest to you that a candidate might be a star?
Well, what do star receptionists do? Don't think of all the million things they might do. Just think of the one or two most important things. Perhaps the best ones are super friendly and well organized. Well, if a candidate likes to spend his spare time alone reading a book, he probably won't be your star. But if he throws a dinner party once a week, you'll know you've got a winner.
Greg Davis, my friend the fishing guide, is on the water fishing with clients six days a week. Can you guess what he does on his one day off?
Not really. In this one paragraph he's actually suggesting there is no great skill to being a receptionist other than being social (which I believe to be a bit elitist btw). That is why it differs.
But in every other part of the article the author suggest hiring people who are obsessed with their area of expertise so much so that they spend their spare time on it (even the last sentence you quote about Greg Davis alludes to that point).
The point I was making is that some people are useful because they are contradictions. The programmer who spends his free time playing guitar in a band might bring perceptions to a discussion that the programmer who codes at night would never think of. Even though being in a band at night does not fit the rigid ideal this article suggests.
Really? What an incredibly long bow to draw.
But let me try to elaborate on my point. The author gives several examples and in each example he cites the person's job and then points out how the fact that they spend their time using the same skills in their personal life makes them the best qualified for their job. Examples
Greg Daniels: Job: Fishing Guide - Free Time: Spent Fishing Captain Sullenberg: Job: Pilot - Free Time: Accident Investigator for Airlines
So his premise is that people who spend their spare time using the same skills as they use in their jobs make better employees. He then brought up the Receptionist example and cited "throwing dinner parties" meaning the skill behind throwing parties is what he think applies to being a receptionist. But his thesis is the same he just sees the skill behind receptionist as socializing
My counter point to his argument was that diversity is valuable and that people who hone skills other than the ones directly related to their job are just as valuable because they can generate insights from those unrelated skills. That's why it's important to have those people along with the people who spend their free time on work related skills.
When I am not working, I DO code for fun, because I enjoy coding.
A better question might be, have you ever done what you do for pay, for free just because you think it's fun.
"I'm not sure what that means."
"Oh...you know...passion. When you look around the campus on any given night, you see lots of lights on. That's passion."
"Actually, I think that's called 'overtime'."
I didn't get that job. Guess I wasn't 'passionate' enough.
I guess there is more nuance to this.
Among my friends the ones I emphatise the most with are the ones who do something. Solve coding puzzles, write code that's useful for others, tinker with new technologies just to satisfy their own curiosity or even only talk about doing these things (which I think is a precursor). This in contrast to those who spend their free time watching TV, doing sports or hanging out.
OTOH I can easily believe that there are people who can do these coding things yet wouldn't be much fun at all. Somehow I just don't meet them.
Does that still count?