The results are in...........

We had 4 candidates who got interviews for the open position in my work group. Interestingly enough, I was the one that helped the project manager interview all four candidates. My project manager is a nice lady, but tends to offer up softball questions in interviews. I think she's also fully aware of that. I'm just the opposite. I'm certainly cordial to the candidates, but I usually ask some questions based off the discussion that cause them to squirm quite a bit. As a result, we make a solid "good cop, bad cop" team in the interviews.

The first candidate was just not someone that I liked all that much. She spoke a lot about how great she was technically, but a review of her resume indicated otherwise. She also appeared to be overly friendly. Normally, that's not a bad thing, but some other things gave me pause. She seemed to be a 'right-fighter'. What that means is that she's often rather be right in a discussion/conflict rather than come to the best or correct conclusion of a situation. When asked about her mistakes that she had made in the past, she turned the question around and pointed the finger at another co-worker as a reason for the problem. She also showed some passive-aggressive tendancies in some of her comments that were a bit frightening. I left that interview hoping for better candidates in future interviews.

The second lady was an improvement over the first candidate. She was very good technically. She had the right answers for those questions. She wasn't quite as good from a social standpoint. We got a lot of one-word answers, which is always a concern when interviewing a candidate. Part of the problem was a bit of a language barrier, as she is a native of India. But she certainly was cordial. Only negative was, when asked about any mistakes in past jobs, she replied that she had not made any mistakes in past jobs. It's a good way to find out if a candidate is telling us what she thinks we want to hear or if she's speaking openly.

The third candidate was very nice as well. Her only issues was a bit less experience than the other candidates. It quickly became apparent that she wasn't as strong as the second candidate technically. She also had similar issues with the question about mistakes she might have made in the past and how she resolved the situation. She just said she had never made mistakes.

The final candidate was very nervous when he first came into the interview. As the interview progressed, he really did well. His technical skills were very good and the conversation was great. He also did something that none of the other candidates did......he actually admitted multiple mistakes in previous jobs. He also did a great job explaining those situations and what he learned from them. That's the kind of candor that you love to see when you interview a candidate.

We ended up hiring the final candidate. His technical skills were great and he was very up-front in his discussions with us on previous jobs. There's no substitute for a good interview and this guy did extremely well in his interview.