Disrupt the Traditional Job Interview with This One Powerful Approach

Most good-but-not-great interviewers tend to ask candidates multiple questions that fit the following format:

“Tell me about a time when you [did X specific thing we care about].”

There are certainly worse questions you can ask. But this approach has serious limitations. It broadcasts your intent too directly, which can lead candidates to manipulate their stories to fit the question (we’ve all done it!). And critically, it can lead to candidates repeating and repurposing stories across multiple interviews. 

For example, Maria is interviewing with several companies, and has done some prep. She has a short list of go-to stories, including one about the big Android release at her last job. She mentally “tags” this story as a good example of (1) innovation, (2) performing under a tight deadline, (3) a cross-functional leadership victory, etc. 

Unsurprisingly, Maria ends up telling five interviewers five different versions of the Android story. The interviewing team is now arguing over which version is correct (or most/least impressive). And, of course, nobody heard the countless other interesting and relevant stories that Maria didn’t prepare in advance.

How do we avoid this? We have to circumvent a candidate's prepped responses and generate a more authentic, natural dialogue. We have to retrieve information the same way humans actually store it: chronologically. 

We recommend including one longer interview in your lineup in which you walk through a candidate’s career journey from start to finish. This “career inventory” approach is tremendously powerful and it works across roles, functions, levels, and industries.

Your objective in this interview is to use the power of curiosity and open-ended questions to navigate through each key role along the candidate’s career path — including the big accomplishments and the big mistakes and missed opportunities in each role. You will gather far more data points per unit of time, and you will never hear the same story twice.

There’s a wonderful side effect of the chronological approach: candidates love it! It’s a far less stressful experience than trying to manufacture responses to hyper-specific questions on the fly. Candidates come away impressed by your thoroughness and your desire to understand them holistically.

To do it right, you will need to set aside ample time—we recommend at least two hours for a candidate with five to 10 years of experience. As such, you will need to let the candidate know it’s coming in advance. But once you build experience with this approach, you will wonder how you ever made hiring decisions without it.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn.

Jordan Burton has 15 years of experience as an executive assessor and interviewing trainer, working with top VC/PE investors and high-growth startups to help them hire the best of the best. He has trained over 3,000 executives and investors on hiring and interviewing skills. He leads Talgo's business development initiatives, managing relationships with Sequoia Capital, TH Lee, Palantir, Chainlink Labs, and over 50 venture-backed startups.

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