The biggest hiring mistake that many technology leaders make is putting software development skills first.
In reality, technical skills are a highly overrated part of a strong candidate's good qualities. When looking for a quality hire, tech skills are not the best indicator of long term success at your company, regardless of seniority level.
Leaders often make the error of heavily weighting technical skills because they don't know what else to look for in a candidate. In this edition, I'll show you what to look for — and how to find it by stealing my go-to interview questions.
Why Tech Skills Matter Less Than You Think
In what remains a couple of the worst and best interviews of my career, I interviewed two candidates who perfectly illustrated this point. Both were applying for a software engineer position.
The first candidate was every recruiter’s dream. She’d been a software developer for many years and previously worked at two of the Big Five. She had all the skills on our requirements list, so of course I agreed to the interview. We even skipped the screening call (that was a mistake). I’m abstracting identities to preserve privacy — I’ll call her Alice.
It was one of the most abrasive interviews I’ve ever conducted. When asked about her methods, Alice was intransigent. She swore and talked down about prior coworkers; her language was unprofessional. When asked one of the company’s standard interview questions — to explain a basic concept — Alice was assumptious and arrogant. She prefaced her answer with, “I mean, you should all already know this, but…”
Would she have been a highly skilled employee? Probably. That doesn’t mean anyone wanted to work with her.
On another hiring journey, a candidate was applying for his first "real" software development job. He was a recent graduate and had no experience to speak of other than personal projects. I'll call him Drew.
By most companies’ standards, Drew would not have seen an interview. He didn’t meet the minimum “years of experience” that so often serves as a poor gatekeeping mechanism.
The only experience Drew had to speak of was an application he built and had been maintaining for the last few years while completing his education.
Why did I agree to the interview? I saw qualities in Drew’s personal projects that often foretell a successful, long-term colleague. I’ll describe what those are below, and how to find out if a candidate has them.
Spoiler alert: Drew joined the team, produced excellent work, and quickly earned a promotion within his first year.
This isn't at all to say that technical skill should be disregarded. Any candidate you consider ought to have the technology chops to (at least) approach the work you want to hire them to do. Nevertheless, technical skill is one of the easiest qualities you can help a software developer improve upon.
Taking on a teammate without the following qualities is a lot more work.
What to Look For: Key Qualities of a Good Candidate
Qualities that forecast the long-term growth and success of a software developer at your company include these top requirements — yes, they’re in priority order:
Autodidactism. Can this person determine what they need to learn, then go find the resources to learn it? Can they successfully comprehend new concepts and explain them to others?
Consistency. Is this person true to their word? Can they stick with a long-term project? Is this someone who doesn't give up easily?
Proactiveness. Do they wait for problems to arise before tackling them, or do they seek out potential issues and nip them in the bud? Do they think ahead?
Humor. Can this person avoid taking themselves too seriously? Are they emotionally mature? Will they get along easily with the current team?
How to Find It: My Go-to Interview Questions
Over years of experience, I’ve distilled a list of go-to interview questions to help reveal the qualities I value above. Here’s what to ask and why.
Tell me about something hard that you've done.
My favorite question first. If you value the key qualities above, you want a candidate who can think of at least one hard thing they’ve done in the past. It doesn’t matter if they ultimately succeeded or failed at whatever their goal was. Ask for the story, for how they handled it.
Did they seek out a challenge? (Proactiveness) How did they know what to do next? (Autodidactism) Did it take a long time to surmount? (Consistency) If they did fail at something, how did they handle it? (Humor)
Tell me about something you regularly do that benefits your life in some way.
Consistency check. It's not easy to build long-term habits, even beneficial ones. Many people start projects or engage in noble efforts only to abandon them when the novelty wears off. How did this candidate decide to start doing this regular thing? How long have they been at it? What's the cost-benefit calculation, or how do they decide it's worthwhile to continue?
Assuming you get this role, what would be the next step in your future career?
I'll admit this one has thrown a few candidates for a loop. People rarely think beyond the job they want next, and it may be stranger still for someone who’s interviewing you to ask about the position you want after the one you're interviewing for.
I like this question for its ability to reveal candidates who think ahead. Even if someone has no specific plan for a future role, a good candidate will be able to describe a general direction and the aspects of the future work that are important to them. I've found that all of this is a good indicator for proactiveness.
What kind of team or leadership do you want to work with?
No other question for me is as revealing as this one when it comes to finding out if your candidate is emotionally mature. This type of maturity is required in order to differentiate between the types of collaboration and leadership styles you've worked with — to understand them, and form an opinion about which ones best complement your own personality.
Ask this question of a few people and you might find it's an excellent indicator of their level of experience as well. Why? More senior developers have, by constraint, worked with a greater variety of people, teammates, company environments, and leaders. They'll be able to tell you quite plainly whether they prefer a scrappy startup-style environment with a flat hierarchy, or a structured organization with strict division of labor and top-down guidance. There's no wrong answer here, though you'll want to ask yourself if your team is going to provide the kind of environment that this candidate thrives in.
Oh, and make a joke.
Speaking of the quality of humor, don't take yourself too seriously. Try a lighthearted joke at some point in your conversation. Not only will this help remind you and your candidate that you're both human, it can help to take pressure off for folks who tend to be very nervous in interviews (and thus act less naturally than they otherwise would). It's a good soft-skills test too. See how your candidate responds, and consider how their response would fit in with the rest of your team.
Be Prepared to Answer, Too!
At the "Do you have any questions for me?" stage of one of my most fun interviews, the candidate picked his favorite interview question that I'd asked of him and turned it right back around on me. It was good thinking on his part — if you were interviewing for a new position, wouldn't you want to see these qualities in your teammates and leaders as well?
Give some thought to how you'd answer all the interview questions you ask. Not only does it show conscientiousness on your part when you're able to answer them for a candidate, but it will help to develop these great qualities in yourself as well.
If you’re wondering what my answers to these questions would be, ask me in the comments!
Take it to work today:
Value the key qualities of a good candidate, not just technical skill.
Steal my go-to interview questions to effectively look for these when hiring.
Know how you'd answer these questions for yourself.
By the way, if you’re interested in a hands-off, technical filter for screening software developers, I built ApplyByAPI.com to fill that need.