>> 3. Will this candidate get along with coworkers?
> Duh. But also, how do you actually test objectively for this without introducing bias?
Dev team cohesion and harmony is hugely important for us. We'll pass on a highly skilled engineer any day if we believe they'll sow division and conflict on our dev team.
In the sense of hard metrics, you can't really test for a toxic personality, but here's what we do:
- We have engineering candidates come on-site for a couple hours before formal interviews and chat informally with several of our engineers. Our engineers show them what they're working on, what technologies we're using, etc. You can learn a fair bit about someone just based upon less formal interactions with a variety of different people. Are they showing interest in what we're doing? Are they eager to tell us about something similar they've done? Are they a respectful attentive listener while a junior is showing the candidate something? Can they communicate and express themselves easily? Obviously candidates are on their best behavior when they come in for a visit, but you can still pick up on certain behaviors that might indicate a problem.
- During formal interviews, we ask candidates the following questions: Tell me about a team project when you had to work with someone difficult. How did you work through that? Could you tell me about a time that you disagreed with a rule or approach? Tell me about a time you made mistake that you learned from and what you’d do differently the next time? The answers to these questions can be very telling. We've had candidates who have been unable to think of a mistake they've made as well as candidates who thought of a mistake they made, but then spent the next 5 minutes explaining how it really wasn't their fault. We've seen some people describe some truly awful approaches to dealing with difficult teammates.
Dev team cohesion and harmony is hugely important for us. We'll pass on a highly skilled engineer any day if we believe they'll sow division and conflict on our dev team.
In the sense of hard metrics, you can't really test for a toxic personality, but here's what we do:
- We have engineering candidates come on-site for a couple hours before formal interviews and chat informally with several of our engineers. Our engineers show them what they're working on, what technologies we're using, etc. You can learn a fair bit about someone just based upon less formal interactions with a variety of different people. Are they showing interest in what we're doing? Are they eager to tell us about something similar they've done? Are they a respectful attentive listener while a junior is showing the candidate something? Can they communicate and express themselves easily? Obviously candidates are on their best behavior when they come in for a visit, but you can still pick up on certain behaviors that might indicate a problem.
- During formal interviews, we ask candidates the following questions: Tell me about a team project when you had to work with someone difficult. How did you work through that? Could you tell me about a time that you disagreed with a rule or approach? Tell me about a time you made mistake that you learned from and what you’d do differently the next time? The answers to these questions can be very telling. We've had candidates who have been unable to think of a mistake they've made as well as candidates who thought of a mistake they made, but then spent the next 5 minutes explaining how it really wasn't their fault. We've seen some people describe some truly awful approaches to dealing with difficult teammates.