Here’s a little tip I use a lot when interviewing/hiring. Make sure you involve people in the process who appear to have NO decision making power. A receptionist or admin type person is great but technically anyone will do, all that matters is that the people you’re interviewing think you have no say in the process. Let’s call these non-decision makers NDM’s to save me some typing.

Now flip it and make those NDM’s key decision makers in the hiring process (Yes I realize I’ve just nulled the NDM term I created by making them decision makers, slack please).

Why?

I alluded to this before, in that you can get a better feel for a person’s true character by observing how they treat the NDM’s. They can’t help but put on a show for the decision makers, they’re trying to impress them.

At brainpark, if you treat our NDM’s like slop you have zero chance of joining our team regardless how many sql’s and sharp C’s you have in your basket. We need people who treat others with respect regardless of their ‘power’ or title. I’m actually considering taking this a step further and intentionally introducing some mild conflict between candidates and NDM’s to see how they handle it. In cases where some tension has naturally arisen between candidates and NDM’s, it’s always incredibly revealing. Through this we’ve found some lovely, gracious people and we’ve uncovered a few nasty pricks. Both of which are impossible to spot on a resume or by asking what the difference is between a class and an object.

Now a tip for the other side. If you’re interviewing for a job, don’t assume the manager, and other ‘power’ players are the only ones making the decision. Or even better, just don’t be a dick to anyone period.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under Office Gossip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.