As I mentioned in a recent post, I have an intern this summer who is helping me do some of the work that the other members of my team do not have the technical know-how to do. This is significant for us as a team because we have been trying to fill a spot to do this work ever since I started, and it’s been difficult to say the least. Thinking about this has naturally led me to think about being part of the interviewing process, and how it is a skill that I’ve surprisingly become quite good at.
Interviewing was certainly never something I saw myself doing through my first few jobs. You grow up thinking that interviewing is the realm of managers and important people. Interviewers are also supposed to be really tough and out to get you. So I was a bit surprised when I eventually got asked to help with interview loops at Amazon since I don’t fit any of those preconceived notions. But once I learned how the process worked, it made a lot of sense to be a part of it, and I soon grew to like it a lot.
I’m going to focus on three things here. First, why the Amazon process is so good. Second, why I find the process at my current company lacking in comparison. And third, what I’ve learned from being a part of both.
The title of this post comes from one of Amazon’s famous leadership principles, “Hire and Develop the Best”. And like all of their principles, Amazon throws a lot of resources at fulfilling that goal. The hiring process certainly isn’t perfect, as nothing is, but it does tend to hire the best the vast majority of the time.
There are three reasons why the hiring process works well. First, after the initial phone screen to measure basic skills for the role, the in-house loop contains 4-6 interviews, depending on the level of the role. The two most important aspects about the loop are that: each interviewer covers different skills and competencies, and interviewers never know what the other interviewers think until after they’ve made a decision to hire or not. These aspects ensure that loops are consistent, thorough, and as objective as possible.
Second, the company ensures that every interviewer has the right tools to get the job done. Obviously it is up to each interviewer to use them correctly (and it is clear that many do not), but it is super helpful overall. The tools ensure the important aspects of loops that I already spoke of are enforced. The hiring scheduler makes sure everyone involved knows exactly where to be, when to be there, what they need to cover, and hides other feedback before you make your decision. If an interviewer is not sure how to cover their assigned competencies, there are guidelines on what to ask and what to look for. There are mandatory training programs that each interviewer has to take, plus shadowing with an experienced interviewer, before they can go solo. I personally have some issues with those programs, but they do set a baseline that avoids bad situations that lead to candidates having a bad experience.
Third, every loop must have a third-party interviewer on it. This is done through Bar Raisers. Their purpose on loops is to make sure the candidate is a good fit for the company in order to prevent managers from hiring bad people out of desperation to fill out their team. Bar Raisers also make sure that loops are constructed properly beforehand, they lead the debriefs, and they have ultimate veto power if the manager continues to push for a hire when it’s a bad idea. This is the one area that sets Amazon apart from similar companies, and one of the reasons I got so good at interviewing is because I trained to be one.
I really enjoyed the whole process that Amazon put in place and it’s part of why I wanted to get more involved with interviewing more and more as I worked there.
Where I work now, things are… not the same. There is no real process to speak of, so I’ve been doing my best to put some in. Maybe it is different for other positions within the company, but for hiring people for my team the only process we have in place is that there is a phone screen and (if possible) an in-house with just two interviews. Possibly a third one if it’s warranted. I don’t feel this gathers enough data to make an educated decision.
But what I have been struggling the most with is that there is no goal in mind. What made the Amazon process so easy was that every role was clearly defined and when you went into the interview, you knew exactly what data points you were trying to get. Where I am now, the role is unclear and shifts depending on who we have at the moment, and my only direction is to “find out their technical ability.” I mean, I’m fully capable of doing that, but it’s pretty broad. It saddens me that technical ability is the only real factor in the decision, since team/culture fit is also important, but our company isn’t interested in that.
I know that I shouldn’t expect anything else from a startup. I’m not working at one of the biggest companies in the world anymore, that everyone in tech wants to work at, and gives offers to less than 20% of candidates. Obviously there’s no reason to have the same rigorous process, so I can live with it. The only thing that really annoys me about this new process is that people can’t stop telling me what they think when they finish and before I’ve had my turn. It’s a bad practice, skewing what interviewers think before they meet the candidate. I go out of my way now to not listen and get into the room as quickly as possible to avoid getting those negative impressions.
Overall the process of learning to interview has been really rewarding and helpful in other areas as well. I’ve historically been really bad at making small talk with people because I can’t think of questions to ask, or how to lead conversations. It’s a lot easier to answer other people when they ask about me. While I’m still not great at it, interviewing has forced me to be better at it, even though it’s in a different context. With interviewing, it’s easy to lead because I know exactly what I’m looking for. With just normal chit-chat, I still struggle because I have no real direction until something reveals itself. I have a lot of trouble getting interested in other people without some prompting. Interviewing has also gotten me more comfortable with just talking to people I don’t know, especially over the phone.
I’ve also learned how to prepare for interviewing people. When first starting out, I would try to just wing it, but I would never get the information I was looking for, which was a big no-no. So I started using templates to guide things better. When I got a competency I wasn’t used to interviewing for, I would have to get new questions, and over time I learned which questions worked and which ones didn’t. When I started doing the Bar Raiser program, I had to retool my whole process because I still wasn’t getting the data they wanted. I had to get a lot better at listening and really digging into the answers I was being given. That alone has paid the most dividends in how I interview people. By the end of my career there, I had a really good system going and I could get ready for a loop in 15 minutes or less, regardless of what role the candidate was interviewing for, or what I was asked to get data on.
This is all to say, I certainly have no intention to stop interviewing just because I don’t agree with how it’s done in my new company. I still like being a part of the process, knowing that my opinion is important and I get to have some control in deciding who I work with. And while I don’t get the same opportunities or feelings of success as I used to, I’m still learning and getting better at it all the time.