“Tell me about a time when … “

I don’t think anyone truly loves the “behavioral” interview, no matter which side of the table (or Zoom screen) you are on. As an interviewer, you’re trying to get important information (Will they be successful here? Will I be able to work with this person? Will they be able to work with the broken souls in our team?) from an unreliable narrator. As a candidate you are often trying to answer multiple questions at once - the question and the question behind the question - while condensing what was often a long, complicated chunk of your professional life into a pithy anecdote the interviewer can digest. “Why yes, I can tell you about a six month project that I worked on with 20 people in six different capacities that changed scope seven times and frame my response in a concise STAR format that only takes 2 minutes to recount.” On top of that are the biases built into the format - bias in favor of extroverted interviewers, bias for people with resources to do interview prep, bias towards confidence over accomplishment, group affinity and more.

That being said, like Churchill’s line about democracy, behavioral interviews are the worst assessments of behavior - except for all the others. This becomes apparent when you try some of the substitutes, such as the one that came with an application I submitted recently. The company asked me to take an online (34 question!) “cultural test.”

If every interview is a mutual evaluation between the company and the candidate, then this online quiz tells us a lot more about the company than it tells the company about its applicants. In particular, this tells us is that the company (or at least the writer of the quiz) needs therapy.

(Screenshots below are from the form, unaltered, but I have cut out any identifying information about the company and the platform that hosted the quiz.)

Of course this question can’t be answered without context. Is the colleague going through chronic illness or a divorce? Are they a jerk who called my kids ugly? Were they set up for success in the first place? What’s your relationship - leader, peer, subordinate? Retrospective questions (like, ugh, “tell me about a time when … “) are helpful here, but this is not asking you how you have reacted in the past, but instead is asking you to predict your response to an abstract person in an abstract environment. Humans are very bad at predicting their future responses to things - just ask anyone who thought they would be happy owning a swimming pool. (Psychologists call this process Affective Forecasting if you want to go down the rabbit hole.)

I mean…what are they even trying to assess here? Does the company regularly set up their employees with faulty laptops? Is nothing in the cloud? What do we know about the stakeholders? Can you laugh it off or are they stereotypical stiffs like the the antagonists in a Marx Brothers movie? This is a cultural fit assessment and its multiple choice, so it implies that there’s some correct answer in here, but God knows what it is.

This might make sense if these were poles on some quadrant system - like things that are in tension that you have to trade off against. These aren’t. Urgency doesn’t preclude strategy or planning. Planning doesn’t preclude discussion. These could be labeled “apple,” “typewriter,” “nuclear explosion,” “Chron’s disease” and it would make the same amount of sense.

Also, why is the only person of color the only one in a non business setting? Why are no women in either strategy or planning? Why does the strategist look like he’s wearing a clown nose?

Lots of interviews ask about professional failures. Hearing about how people take ownership of and recover from problems, apply humility, use growth mindsets are all valuable. This question isn’t asking that - it’s asking you to choose how you’d deflect blame.

What?

Feel free to ask about how someone uses AI. That is totally reasonable in today’s work environment, at least until the bottom drops out. It is none of your goddamn business how anyone feels about AI.

Would you ask this about any other business tool? I mean, I use Excel every day. I’ll even say I’m better at it than most non-finance people. How do I feel about Excel? They say the opposite of love is indifference, so I think that’s where I’m at, but that doesn’t have any bearing on my ability to use it.

(And again…the image choices. People of color are “scared” and “confused,” white folks are “excited” and “thrilled.” The scared image also comes really close to a 1920’s stereotype.)

The fact this is even a question says volumes. The fact that “work-life balance” is in quotes says more.

This is really … specific. There’s a story here and I want to hear it, preferably over a beer.

OK, first, I think you need to be hiring for a project manager not some vague cultural fit. Second, if you’re flying to New York for a podcast, why didn’t you pack the equipment you need? Or arrange it ahead of time? Why are you flying to New York just to do a podcast when Zoom exists? I know you don’t celebrate it but it’s hard to believe that the UK doesn’t have some cultural awareness of July 4. The UK played a critical role in the story of US independence, after all (although it’s the US is taxing the UK for tea now.)

Also, it’s New York - I guarantee you can find what you need even on July 4th. Also, also, I want to hear this story after you finish the one about getting hacked. Second round is on me.

Ok I can see you’re working through something here …

Hey. Hey buddy. You doing OK? You want to get a cup of tea and talk about it?

A lot of the feeling that the process of recruiting, interviewing, and hiring is broken today, I think, stems from companies trying to scale the process of hiring without thinking critically about what they are trying to scale for. Without knowing the specific history here, it’s not hard to imagine a directive to “streamline” the hiring process without focusing on what the organization was trying to actually get out of the candidates they interviewed.

I have seen similar issues in organizations in which online coding assessments - or worse, even minimal to no interviewing of entry-level candidates - led to gaming of the process and were eventually rolled back to phone screens and more traditional interviews. The assessments tested basic coding challenges but not how people went about problem solving - and so the people who were brought on struggled.

So we are here. Candidates jump through hoops like tests like this without the company getting anything meaningful out of it. At least they haven’t outsourced interviewing wholesale to AI recruiters.

Next week - my interview with an AI recruiter.