Stupid Inteview Tricks: Dismissing the Question

It's been years since I've posted on the topic of Stupid Interview Tricks. From interviews I've done in the past few weeks— interviewing candidates for jobs at my company— I've got a few new ones. Two are related and one is not.

First, the unrelated one: Not including teammates in interviews. This is a stupid trick on the part of the hiring company, not the candidate. One reason I haven't posted about stupid interview tricks in several years is that I've rarely been included in the interview process the past several years. At my company interviews have routinely done by managers: the hiring manager, the hiring manager's manager, the division exec, plus a few managers of adjacent teams. What's missing here is the person the candidate will work directly with on a daily basis. How can management think this interview is so important as to be skipped routinely? I'm glad to see this appears to be changing.

Now two stupid tricks from the candidate side of the interview:

Disrespecting the Question. One candidate began his response to literally every substantive question I asked with the intro, "Well, look. The thing is...." That intro implies the question was misstated, off base, or making the subject more complicated than it really is. Done once I would have ignored it. Done twice I would have noted it as a minor thing. Done every time it was disrespectful.

As I began to write a negative evaluation after that interview I paused to ask myself whether maybe I was being too sensitive to a small (but consistent) verbal tic. Then I considered how sales training techniques such as the Sandler method teach the importance of how to respond to questions. Sandler emphasizes to begin your response with a positive phrase, something like, "That's a great question,' or, "I'm glad you asked." That shows you're listening and are aligning with your counterpart's needs. It also gently rewards them for asking a question, encouraging them to be more engaged in the discussion. The opposite of this is implying to your counterpart that the question is off base and suggesting they should feel slightly foolish for asking such things.

Giving Too-Brief Answers. The same candidate as above also made the mistake of giving brief answers to every question. Sure, sometimes a brief answer is what's wanted, and going long can be a negative. But when I, as the interviewer, ask for details you need to provide them.

For example, this candidate had on his resume that he succeeded in selling to target clients where others in his company failed. "Tell me about one of those deals you closed and what you did differently to win it," I asked.

"Well, look, the thing is"— there's that noxious phrase— "I try harder. I don't take 'no' for an answer."

"So you had to overcome their objections? Tell me more about that," I asked, looking to get past the platitude of "I try harder."

"Well, look, the thing is, overcoming objections is how you close big deals."

I hope you can see in this brief dialogue that the candidate's answers were brief to the point of being insulting. But beyond even his answers raised concern that he was misrepresenting his record. When you're asked to describe a thing you did and you dodge providing any details, giving instead platitudes and circular answers, you create legitimate doubt that you understood what you were doing or that you even did it at all. Maybe someone else did the hard work and you were just along for the ride.

By the way, a great answer to this question looks like this:

"Thanks for asking that. I'm really proud of my success selling to XYZ company. When I inherited that account I found that the people we had been talking to, IT Services, would own the solution once it was purchased but were not the ones who owned the purchase decision. That decision belonged to the Product organization. I worked through our contacts in IT Services and scoured LinkedIn connections to identify influencers in Product. We then developed advocates on both sides of the business to land the sale."

That is how you nail this type of interview question.

Hiking Boulder Creek Falls

North Cascades Travelog #10
Near Winthrop, WA - Sun, 3 Sep 2023, 4pm.

We made pretty good time coming down the trail after visiting Cedar Creek Falls this afternoon. I was thinking the return hike might take until 3, but we were back to the car by 2:30. That gave me more confidence we might even manage three waterfall hikes today, not just two. But first, two. Number 2 was Boulder Creek Falls.

Finding Boulder Creek Falls required a bit of attention to directions and a bit of wilderness sense. We drove back to town and then out on a country road to the north for about 6 miles, turning off onto a forest road. The remaining directions were "Drive 1.8 miles to a wide spot in the road. Park on the right." There's no actual sign for the trail. And around 1.8 miles in there were multiple wide spots in the road. That's where we had to eyeball the shape of the contours of the canyon, predicting where a drop might be, and listen for the sound of crashing water. Fortunately it wasn't that hard (not for us, anyway) and we found the right spot.



In addition to the trail not being signed it was also primitive. It's more like a use trail, where we're following a path created by people following in one another's footsteps rather than a trail built or maintained as a trail. A short walk took us down to a rocky ledge above the falls (photo above).

Earlier we'd seen a person down in the creek below the falls. How to get down there? we wondered. The hill on the right is prohibitively steep, and the creek on the left has no bridge to cross.

"We'll just have to get our feet wet," I proposed.

Hawk was reluctant at first— not so much for getting her feet wet but for the possibility of slipping and torquing her back fording the swift creek. She warmed to it after I went first and didn't fall.



Once across the creek we looped around to the right and walked out on a rock ridge that's kind of opposite the falls. Balancing atop the rock was a bit challenging with wet boots, but I perched there for a while enjoying the view and snapping photos like the one above.

It was pleasant, as well, that we had the area to ourselves. That's one of the benefits of finding these hard-to-find trails.... Not many other people find them. The small group of hikers here when we arrived left a few minutes after we arrived.



I scrambled down the side of the rock face to a spot at the foot of the falls. The scramble was a tad tricky with my wet boots and my stiffening muscles— the downside of doing two-fers and three-fers! But I used my outdoors skill to pick a safe route down the rocks so I didn't slip. The view at the bottom of the falls was kind of similar to the one from 15' higher up but still just enough different to make it worth it. I stayed in the grotto below the falls, enjoying the nature and solitude, for about 10 minutes before heading back up.

Why not stay longer? Well, there's that three-fer we still want to do! Stay tuned for more.