Two weeks ago I posted interview questions from a discussion among entrepreneurs, asked how you would address them and said I would share the intel from the group’s further discussions. Of course, it took a week longer than expected because everyone was busy, but here is, to the best of my ability, an unbiased summary of their thoughts.

Although not black and white, the group seemed to generally fall into one of two camps—one opting for being open and candid and the other more focused on expediency, based on company needs and the position’s urgency.

• Camp Open and Candid: Several attitudes seemed to be at work here. There was the general feeling that candidate’s deserved to know the negatives along with the positives; the feeling was that if negatives were glossed over the candidate was more likely to leave when they did surface and that in both the short and long run turnover was more detrimental to product development as well as team morale.

  Several focused on the issue of trust, with the most adamant saying that omitting or avoiding was the same as an outright lie.

  Regarding the difference between candidates who are available vs. those currently working, this group felt it was very important to “level” regarding any difficulties the company was facing. A few said that this was more important for candidates with greater financial responsibilities, i.e., mortgages, kids, non-working spouse, etc., but all agreed that they would want to know if positions were reversed.

  All agreed that there were sensitive areas couldn’t be shared, but that it was wrong to use that as an excuse to avoid answering questions.

  The general feeling regarding compensation (equity or money) was one of being as open as legally possible.

• Camp Expediency: The general attitude in this group was one of extreme focus on moving the company forward. It was felt that first loyalty had to be to investors and making the vision a reality or there wouldn’t be a company.

  Some felt that candidates applying to startups understood this and therefore wouldn’t expect anything else, while others said that is was naïve to hold startups to a different level of openness than was expected from established companies.

  None felt that a candidate’s personal situation, currently employed, responsibilities, etc., should have any impact on the discussions and they assumed that anyone applying to a startup was familiar with the risks and working requirements.

  On the subject of compensation, especially equity and funding, they were almost universally adamant that the information was confidential and should be kept so, with the exception of certain executive and critical hires.

Both sides offered solid reasons for their approach and none came over as advocates of the lie/cheat/steal school of thought.

My subjective reaction was that the first group took a longer term view of their current startup, as well as future efforts, and were concerned about damaging their personal brand by not walking their talk, while the second was more focused on the immediate situation.

What do you think?

Flickr image credit: Valerie Everett

An article in the Canadian Globe & Mail listing ten realities of working for a startup sparked a discussion with a group of entrepreneurs.

Everyone agreed that ‘what do you tell candidates during interviews’ is too general a question, so here are some of the specific questions they voiced.

• How safe is it to assume that everybody who applies to a startup has read/heard enough to know the pitfalls?
• How much of the “down side” should be mentioned during an interview, especially with highly desirable candidates.
• Should you bring up the need to pivot—often more than once—when the end result may have little relationship to the candidate’s stated interests?
  • What if the pivot is already on the drawing board, but not yet public?
• How do you respond to questions about how company failure would affect their career?
• What do you say to someone with desperately needed skills who is willing to start in that area, but wants to learn new areas in a reasonably short period?
• What do you say when the candidate questions the option package and asks about option pool, investment rounds and dilution?
• Should you hire if you still have some money, but your investors have lost interest and are recommending closing the company?”
  • Should the fact that the candidate would be resigning from a current position to join you make a difference?

How have/would you handle these questions in an interview you were conducting?

Come back next week to see responses from the group.

Image credit: arte_ram

Interviewing; everybody’s favorite thing, right up there with root canals and ironing. Having spent more than ten years as a headhunter (my term of preference) I’ve heard a lot of off-beat, weird and totally illegal. That was a long time ago and by comparison the list on BNET is tame, but still outside the ordinary.

A number of the questions were from high tech companies and turned on math, but I wonder if they use the same questions for marketing and other critical non-tech functions—or maybe they don’t consider them critical.

• How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine? (Reportedly from IBM)
• Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make? (Reportedly from Facebook)
• How many basketballs can you fit in this room? (Reportedly from Google)

The next question strikes me as a hot potato, at the least, or a political grenade depending on the response.

• Why do you think only a small portion of the population makes over $150,000? (Reportedly from New York Life)

The supposed point of this question it to see how candidates would handle a job for which they had no preparation or experience. I wonder how well it works, especially since so many young people work in pizzerias during school—but maybe not in Germany.

• What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle? (This question comes from Volkswagen.

I like this one, but you have to wonder what happens when the candidate names a superhero and the interviewer isn’t familiar with it.

• If you could be any superhero, who would it be? (Reportedly from AT&T)

Considering the above questions, perhaps this one should be asked of the interviewers and not the candidates.

• Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are (Reportedly from Capital One)

Image credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

The referral source is awesome.

The resume is amazing.

The candidate asks great questions.

He is excited—interested in you, your vision and your product.

The team is thrilled.

The offer is made and accepted.

Everybody cheers.

As the euphoria of landing a “star” wears off you find yourself reviewing the interview like a favorite video looking to regain that feeling of triumph.

Instead, you find yourself with a slightly queasy feeling—because you can’t remember any of the candidate’s specific answers to critical questions.

So you ask your team and it turns out that either they thought someone else had asked those questions or were so caught up in his enthusiasm and answering his questions that they ran out of time.

And you suddenly realize that you have no idea going forward if he will be a star or a dud.

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I used to say that the only thing worse than my memory was my hearing or vice versa—depending.

Today it is my memory. Last week, after two weeks of ‘Questions’, I said we would revisit wisdom, since questions are often the start of wisdom, forgetting that I just did two on wisdom in October. But that’s OK; you can’t have too much wisdom.

There is an old saying, “knowledge is wisdom;” the updated version is, “Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not understanding. Understanding is not wisdom.”

T.S. Eliot understood this when he said, “Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson understood the difference when he said, “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”

The ways to wisdom are varied and it is Confucius who best describes them, “By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.”

Nietzsche tells us, “Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge,” while Anthony Shaftesbury reminds us, “Giving advice is sometimes only showing our wisdom at the expense of others;” not a very nice use of wisdom.

But the final word goes to Charles H. Spurgeon who sums it up nicely, “Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/541576567/

Questions were the topic of last week’s Quotable Quotes and I promised you more today.

The power of questions is recognized world wide; the Irish believe that “questioning is the door of knowledge,” while in India Indira Gandhi said, “The power to question is the basis of all human progress.”

Not everybody likes people who ask questions; as Dale Spender points out, “Openly questioning the way the world works and challenging the power of the powerful is not an activity customarily rewarded.”

On the other hand, Francis Bacon, Sr. said, “A prudent question is one half of wisdom.”

And according to Alice Wellington Rollins, “The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer.” I love that idea, probably because I had a couple of teachers like that.

As a person who loves conversation, I relate completely with James Nathan Miller’s thoughts on the subject, “There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation.”

Questions may drive conversation, but as Anon points out, “There are two sides to every question, because, when there are no longer two sides it ceases to be a question.”

Answers often offer up wisdom, even innocuous ones, such as this from Garson Kanin, “A man ninety years old was asked to what he attributed his longevity. I reckon, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, it because most nights I went to bed and slept when I should have sat up and worried.”

Join me next week for another look at wisdom.

Image credit: immrchris on sxc.hu

Do you ask questions? I ask them constantly. In fact, I drive some of my friends nuts because I’m always asking questions.

In order to ask questions you need to listen makes you think and is a good way to show interest, not just about what was said, but about the person who said it.

As Nancy Willard says, “Sometimes questions are more important than answers.”

Naguib Mahfouz says,“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions,” but I doubt that most my questions show wisdom—just curiosity.

My friends call me a why person (true), which is why I agree so wholeheartedly with Friedrich Nietzsche’s comment, “He who has a why can endure any how.”

There’s an old joke that men won’t ask for directions, but these days I find that a lot of women won’t, either. Maybe that’s what is meant by equality.

As usual, the ancient Chinese offer excellent wisdom regarding questions.

Thousands (millions?) of executives and managers would do well to heed the words of this Chinese proverb, “He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever” in combination with these words from Confucius, who said, “Never hesitate to ask a lesser person.” Just think of all the money they would save asking their own people instead of hiring consultants.

That’s all for this week, but come back next week for more about questions.

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How do you define success? Do you (or your boss) look only at the numbers and other recognized metrics or do you go a step further and evaluate the harder-to-define areas? Numbers and other business metrics are important, but they measure mostly the present, i.e., short-term results. What does long-term success look like? How can you evaluate yourself in terms of long-term success? Do you care? If your answer to the third question is “no” then you probably won’t be interested in the rest of this post, but if it is “yes” read on. Whether you are a newly promoted supervisor or Fortune 100 CEO, one easy way to know if you are succeeding is to ask your team. Asking is like a 360 degree review without all the bells, whistles and forms. It’s immediate and gives you a fairly accurate reading of the trust level of your team. If you hesitate to do that or your people won’t provide honest feedback then

• Your hesitancy means you already know there is a problem and aren’t comfortable with, or not interested in, changing to accommodate the feedback.
• If your people won’t be honest then you have propagated a belief that the messenger will be killed and that belief is typically entrenched in a larger culture of fear.

Either way, the source of the problem is you—not your team or even the general company culture (unless you are CEO), just you. You made it happen and if you want to fix it I suggest you have a long talk with your MAP because that is where the problem lies. The good part is that it’s your MAP and your choice to change it. Your comments—priceless Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr

When it comes to eloquent proverbs filled with insightful wisdom nobody comes anywhere near the Chinese, not in more than 4000 years.

This is especially true when it comes to learning.

Think about it, is there any question what is meant by “A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood” or any doubt about the truth of it?

Anyone who has ever expended effort in imparting their knowledge to another knows the truth of this saying, “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.”

Not just teachers, but every trainer worth their salt will agree with this sentiment, “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.” It is why they use role-playing, why apprentice programs work and why there is no substitute for OJT (on-the-job training).

In today’s image conscious culture too often people avoid asking questions for fear of being laughed at or worse. I know there have been times I didn’t ask, usually on subjects that fell in the “any idiot knows that” only to find out later that the answer was neither well-known nor obvious. The Chinese call it ‘losing face’, but their ancestors knew the truth. “He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”

Last, but definitely not least, is the proverb that has been the basis of my life. It is what I’ve held onto every time my world has turned upside down—more times than I like to remember. “Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.”

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Are you looking for a good way to make your company or group more innovative? To move it from where it is to where you want it to be?

A good place to start is by encouraging your people to question the fundamentals (QF) of the company.

QF is one of the best ways to overcome the “…but we’ve always done it that way” school of thought and foes a long way to overturning “not invented here” syndrome; both are major stumbling blocks to innovation, productivity, retention and a host of other positives moves.

QF also goes a long way to attracting Millennials and other creative types, because there are no sacred cows—everything is open to improvement and change.

However, making an announcement isn’t going to do it.

Start by identifying your company’s fundamentals, not so much the official ones (although they can also be problematic) as the unwritten/unspoken ones your employees deal with every day.

It’s easy to find them, just ask—but ask knowing that you may not like the answers. (One client found that, contrary to its stated policy, their people believed that quality wasn’t as important as shoving the product out the door.)

Depending on your current culture the identification process can be anything from a public brainstorming session with a whiteboard to some kind of “suggestion box” that’s truly anonymous.

You may be very surprised at some of the perceptions that turn up.

Once you start on a list of fundamentals you want to open them up to debate—the more passionate the better—using a combination of technology (forum, wiki, etc.) and in person discussions. The object being to decide whether to modify/jettison/keep each one, as well as what to add.

Unless your MAP dictates a company that functions in Dilbertland, this is an ongoing, proactive management task to encourage employees to question, rethink, revamp or even dump the company’s fundamentals.

Even when QF is deeply embedded in your culture you can’t assume your people will keep doing it and new people coming from other cultures will need assurance that QF is indeed part of your company’s DNA.

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr