Metadata
- Author: Lenny Rachitsky
- Full Title: How to Learn the Most About a Candidate From a Single Interview Question
- URL: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-learn-the-most-about-a-candidate
Highlights
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Q: What is your favorite interview question? In most hiring processes, you’re lucky if you get 45 minutes to chat with a candidate before you have to make a thumbs-up or thumbs-down decision. How do you use that precious time to get the most—and most important—information? (View Highlight)
- Below, I’ll share my 25 favorite high-signal-to-noise interview questions, including what to look for in a great answer, grouped by theme. If you’ve found any other questions that are super-valuable in your interview experience, please share in the comments! (View Highlight)
- How do they handle the hard stuff? You can learn the most about how a person operates, thinks, and collaborates by exploring times when things didn’t go as planned. If they get hired, you can guarantee they’ll face unexpected challenges, so you’ll want to know how they’ll handle these moments before they have to tackle them on your team. (View Highlight)
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- Talk me through your biggest product flop. What happened and what did you do about it? (View Highlight)
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- What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? (View Highlight)
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- Tell me about a time you’ve been in a challenging or highly ambiguous situation, and how you navigated that ambiguity. (View Highlight)
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- Describe a time when you were part of a controversial product decision, and what you did. (View Highlight)
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- Tell me about a time something went wrong. What happened and what did you do about it? (View Highlight)
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- What is the worst product that you’ve ever shipped? (View Highlight)
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- Tell me about a time when you needed to disagree with your manager or fight for a position against higher leadership. (View Highlight)
- How do they think? The strongest and most valuable candidates are people who are good at self-reflection and can approach problems differently. They break norms, they challenge assumptions, and they think from first principles. These questions can help you find lateral and “out-of-the-box” thinkers. (View Highlight)
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- What’s something that everyone takes for granted that you think is hogwash? (View Highlight)
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- What’s an unfair secret you’ve learned to improve a product team’s velocity and energy level? (View Highlight)
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- Tell me about something you did that worked out but not for the reason that you thought it would. (View Highlight)
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- What is an experiment you launched that had a very unexpected result? And what did you do after that? (View Highlight)