Last Thursday we had several hours of straight interviews, all but one of them were outstanding candidates. The first round of interviews for us is a “get to know” session. In 1 hour we have to get at the essence of the person. We actually put a good chunk into the person’s “blink factor.” If we aren’t feeling just a little bit of love in the first 2 minutes, then the candidate is going into an uphill battle.

After the “blink factor” we really want to know the person. How did they come into their career choice? What are they passionate about? Are they multi-dimensional? Are they a ridged or free-thinker? etc… Then we start analyzing the skill and experience level. Resumes don’t amount to much; just because a candidate lists every single program they’ve worked on doesn’t mean they are qualified for the job. Likewise a track-record of short job stints doesn’t mean they hop from company to company. In fact, one of the candidates in the last round of interviews didn’t list a job which lasted longer then 1 year. However, during the interview it became clear this candidate was very passionate about his line of work and the stints were not by choice but by circumstance.

The next part of the evaluation is the 4 staple questions which apply to everyone we hire at Imulus:
1. How do you rate your organization skills?
2. From 1 to 10, where are you with your writing skills and can we see samples?
3. Do you like formal meetings or ad-hoc gatherings?
4. How do you like to be managed?

Sure, they can lie their way through these questions but if they make it back to the second interview then the WHOLE OFFICE will have a shot at uncovering the real truth. At that point someone will smell bullshit. Anyone at Imulus has veto power, it needs to be a unanimous decision.

The last part of the evaluation is asking the question, is this person the best fit for the job? I would have hired several candidates if we were looking for an mid-level .NET person or Web developer, but we are looking for senior level experience. With just interviews and references to go off of it’s often tough to gauge how the candidate will respond to a real-working environment with our office dynamics, workload and management style. This is the part of the interview where I believe you have to trust your gut. I’m a big believer in quantifying data and looking at things scientifically but sometimes that feeling in the pit of your stomach is often the best judge of a situation.

I’ll guess you’ll see shortly who we’ve decided on.