Certainly the focus for senior hires should be behavioral and system design.
I love that you encourage leaders to start with understanding what works in their organization. This will allow them to pick structured signal areas to assess throughout the process, leading to better decision making and reducing bias.
I would also encourage teams to share that structured rubric with candidates, which will result in them being better prepared for the more precise interview questions you recommend.
(I think these precise questions are a double edge sword btw since they often assess preparation coverage and/or don't get to the candidate's most relevant stories. You and the candidate need to know how to guide the conversation to discuss and assess the signal areas despite question/story fit, and that takes a bit of skill and practice.)
As always, really solid advice here Austen! Thanks for your comment - I always find your input valuable.
One senior director at my company mentioned that in a previous company he worked at they went as far as to share the exact questions that will be asked in the behavioural interview with the candidates.
Initially he was sceptical of the idea (as am I), but decided to give it a go as an experiment and apparently that worked really well for them. Candidates were able to prepare enough for the topics and due to the way the interview was conducted, which focused on depth over breadth, the interviewers were able to get better signal on candidates.
I can believe that, though of course it comes w/ its own risks like AI prep and also might induce reticence in the interviewer to go off script if necessary, since it seems like a disservice to the candidate.
Certainly the focus for senior hires should be behavioral and system design.
I love that you encourage leaders to start with understanding what works in their organization. This will allow them to pick structured signal areas to assess throughout the process, leading to better decision making and reducing bias.
I would also encourage teams to share that structured rubric with candidates, which will result in them being better prepared for the more precise interview questions you recommend.
(I think these precise questions are a double edge sword btw since they often assess preparation coverage and/or don't get to the candidate's most relevant stories. You and the candidate need to know how to guide the conversation to discuss and assess the signal areas despite question/story fit, and that takes a bit of skill and practice.)
As always, really solid advice here Austen! Thanks for your comment - I always find your input valuable.
One senior director at my company mentioned that in a previous company he worked at they went as far as to share the exact questions that will be asked in the behavioural interview with the candidates.
Initially he was sceptical of the idea (as am I), but decided to give it a go as an experiment and apparently that worked really well for them. Candidates were able to prepare enough for the topics and due to the way the interview was conducted, which focused on depth over breadth, the interviewers were able to get better signal on candidates.
I can believe that, though of course it comes w/ its own risks like AI prep and also might induce reticence in the interviewer to go off script if necessary, since it seems like a disservice to the candidate.
Here’s a time when I went “off-script.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/authorkirt/p/the-joys-of-a-behavioral-interview?r=71vn3e&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay