Interviewing Your Interviewer (Part-1)
‘Interviews’, with the advent of startup culture, hiring and firing are the most common phenomenon we see in the ecosystem. Apart from employment, everyone would have faced interviews in their life for PhD or higher education or Visa etc.
I was working with a company as a consultant. CEO of the company had asked me to look after Hiring. Usually in startups, though there would be management board. Most of the decisions would be taken by the founder and his close friends or brothers, sometimes the family of the CEO would have already finalized decisions on the dinner table, the previous night. The purpose of the board meeting would be just to inform us that they have taken the decision rather than asking our opinions, before finalizing it.
Leaving the decision-making point aside. Let's focus on interviews, I have been assigned with a girl, whom the CEO thinks a hard worker and has good knowledge in coding for taking technical interview’s. I was okie with it, I have selected few resumes, conducted a preliminary round of them and forwarded them to technical round. But to my dismay, all the 20 resumes were rejected by her. Initially, I thought onus is on me, maybe I did some mistake. This time I took care and had chosen 10 resumes carefully, in which I found my ex-colleagues resume too. I know him personally, he is good at coding, good at communication. So, without informing the candidate regarding the same, I have forwarded his resume to the technical interview.
By the end of the day, all the 10 resumes were rejected. When I asked for a reason, she said all the 10 people don't even know English properly, I was a bit shocked. So, the next day I thought to accompany her when she is taking interviews and I was pretty shocked to know, the girl who was taking the interview was asking questions from a website and she is expecting the interviewee to say exact words as answer which are written on the website!!!. I was flabbergasted. Here the issue is she may be great at coding. But personally, she lacks how to assess a person in an interview. Interviews aren’t about getting 100/100 in maths paper. Interviews are assessing a person in various parameters.
With that, I raised the issue in the board meeting. CEO was reluctant to replace her. So, I asked him to at least increase the interviewing team size to three. Such that there would be voting from the three and thus we can reduce the damage. Not only this instance, but even I also faced such a situation in my life.
I was called by a private engineering college from my town when they saw my article on Eenadu. They were planning to start an incubation centre and they want me to lead it. I was happy because I loved the job description. They mentioned that I am the only candidate to call upon, but there will be an interview as per the procedure. I said ‘fine’. I was facing the board of five people and they started asking questions like “what is string, pointer, how will you reverse a string”. Though I answered these questions, I myself felt that these questions are irrelevant for a guy who should lead an Incubation centre.
I politely asked them, if I can know their designations and I came to know all five people were from the CSE department. I asked them sir “ If the interview was regarding incubation centre for college, why are you asking questions regarding software development”. Their answer was “ Yep, you will develop websites right when you sit in the incubation centre, that's the reason we are asking you questions regarding coding”.Perplexed, I asked them, “ Do you think startup means only websites and apps? , what if a mechanical student comes to me and says he has an idea regarding developing a new bike or car? doesn’t our incubation centre support him? and started asking them questions like what is incubation?, what is an accelerator programme?, Who is an angel, who is a VC, what is ideation?” Etc.
As you all know “ Most of the professors love to talk, but hate to listen”, without answering my questions. They said my interview was done. As I expected with no shock “ I was stamped arrogant and not suitable for the job”.
Here my point in the above case is as India is tending towards 100% capitalism and startup culture is increasing. The key decisions would be taken by the founder’s brothers, mother or sisters or best friends or girlfriend or some other person who are close to them. In 80% cases, these people don't even know what is what and they tend to interview us. So, there would be no linkage or relevance in facing such interview boards even if you do possess the required knowledge.
My suggestion for candidates would be when you get a call or if you're facing an interview. After saying ‘about yourself’, please try to get the details of the board also, in a polite manner. It's not about designations, ask their qualification or experience in a particular field and then proceed with the questions. if there is a question which is not relevant to the job description, you can ask them “what is the relevance of this question” and answer accordingly.
Remember sometimes you deal with a chief marketing officer of a company who is B.A in history but still CMO because he is the brother-in-law of the CEO. In such cases, even if you say sir there is a difference between “Dealing with marketing” and “Market dealing”, he won't accept it because he literally doesn't know anything and by the time he realizes what you said is correct. His company won't exist!!.