inverted triangle and the art of the interview

A recent storytelling with data podcast featured Cole sitting down with SWD advisor Randy Knaflic to talk about a critical part of the hiring process: interviewing. Randy shared tons of great tips and stories from his experience hiring talent for companies like Google, SpaceX, and even storytelling with data. What follows is a brief excerpt from the podcast, in which Randy explains his “inverted pyramid’ approach to constructing interview questions, for the sake of making the entire experience beneficial and positive for both the interviewer and the candidate alike

Audio of the entire episode is available to stream and download from your favorite player:

RANDY

How do we construct questions that are going to go about testing and getting evidence for the different attributes of candidates that we want to test for, whether it’s general cognitive ability, role-related knowledge, leadership, or values fit? This is where the concept of the inverted pyramid can help us craft better questions as well as provide a better experience for the candidate.

If I was interviewing, for example, a recruiter—somebody who has to find talent in the marketplace—one responsibility of a recruiter is to use different methodologies to search and find people who meet the profile to ultimately hire them. And there's techniques to do that.

Let's say a question that I have, trying to test that role-related knowledge, is, "How would you go about finding this type of technology or expertise in a search engine using Boolean logic or on LinkedIn? How would you go about finding that?" That might be my pointed question where I feel like, if this person can tell me this, I'm going to be in a great position to understand if they have the appropriate role-related knowledge.

Now think of an inverted triangle. What we're doing by asking that question is, we’re going right to the point. By doing this, we've actually missed that whole journey that starts at the top more broadly, where we can be getting additional information, additional insights, additional context, and a better understanding of the candidate.

So in a situation like that, I like to find ways in which I could keep it very broad to begin with. So for example: "You know, Cole, what roles did you like hiring for in your previous company? What were some of the positions you enjoyed working on?" This might seem like an easier question, but it's very broad and it lets the conversation start to unfold where I can then get to the next level of conversation.

COLE

Well it's nice to start with something easy or something that the person is going to feel comfortable talking about, because then that gets them comfortable.

RANDY

Yeah. It's not that you're not going right for the, "How would you come up with an algorithm to solve this problem?" Going right for that will take us nowhere. So from that first open-ended question, we can move towards, "All right, let's do a little role play. Imagine I'm a hiring manager, who's looking to hire people with these particular technical skills. How would you qualify that role or work with me on that? Let's just do a little role play. Let's talk through it."

Okay. Now we've gotten a little more detailed on that. And now I would say to the recruiter, "You're going to go to the market, or you're going to go to LinkedIn or Google and do some searching. So talk to me about how you organize a strategy for doing that and managing your time."

And then, ultimately, I could come with this pointed question of, "All right. Let me see what Boolean logic you come up [with] to identify this sort of technology."

So I've taken this triangle of starting broad and getting focused down to one question that's focused on the attribute of role-related knowledge, and I've gotten so much more insight by doing that.

Find the full episode of “The Art of the Interview” and all of our podcast episodes here.