Unlocking Potential: The Key Traits That Made This VP's Best Hire a Game-Changer
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Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
Based on, you know, again the inputs from, from, uh, your target company, uh, they're very, it seems like they have a high degree of concern around, um, kind of leadership management, right? Part of that is um hiring great people. Uh, and so what I'd like to talk about is, uh. If you look back on your career, it's actually just constrained this last 5 years, 10 years, um, and you reflect on the best hire you've ever made, right? This is a, you know, person that you decided to hire within your organization. Um, I'd, I'd like to talk about an example of, you know, if you could think of 3 or 4 people, that's fine, just pick one. someone who you consider one of the best hires of your career and, and first things first, and I have, I following questions is, you know, why do you feel that this person was one of your best hires?
CANDIDATE
Great, um, yeah, I'm thinking of a particular example, and I think What this individual has has done really well is um role model the um The values and approaches and best practices of the, of the organization and um really helped us towards the overall um mission and vision that we're we're striving to uh realize that, you know, the power of data science towards um driving customer success on the cloud. Um, and so, in particular, um, you know, being able to take what the, what our stakeholders are asking for, um, and actually transform that into really what they want and what they need, because sometimes our stakeholders might ask for a specific data point, um, they're not aware of all the tools in the tool belt, uh, within data science, for example, that we You Some way more effectively, um, and so I, I felt like this individual has, has done a good job of striving, um, of accomplishing that. As they come through. OK.
Interviewer Insight
still extremely high level
INTERVIEWER
And so how is this person's career, um, I guess progress, like just how did this person's career progress while working directly for you or within your team? How has it tracked?
CANDIDATE
Right, yeah, he, you know, he started as a individual, um, uh, you know, a senior data scientist, and he's, you know, continued to grow in his career levels. Um, he also grew in terms of leadership, um, to a tech lead, and then, uh, a people manager as well, and, um, you know, being able to speak up on the, the leadership team. There are a few ways he's he's growing an organization.
Interviewer Insight
A recurring trend through this interview - way too high level. In this instance there is little which could be concluded would have been proprietary information, which gives fuel to the perception that the candidate is not in the details.
INTERVIEWER
So what are they doing now?
CANDIDATE
Um, so this individual is currently a manager, um, on my leadership team.
Interviewer Insight
This is an opportunity to identify key projects and or deliverables. Data is helpful to complete the picture of the candidate and very little has been provided in this interview.
INTERVIEWER
Managing still within your team, OK. Mhm. Uh, And so, reflecting on this person. And and their loop kind of thinking back to the loop what? What is it that you identified at the time of hiring in this person that gave you the confidence that they were going to be long-term successful within the organization?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, um, There were a couple of things. I mean, one was just that strong alignment actually in terms of both the skill set and the passion, um, in terms of having that tool toolbox of um. Of, you know, refined techniques that we would be able to leverage in these scenarios, both on the technical side, um, as well as just that strong passion to use that towards business scenarios, um, and Also had an MBA, um, which I found the folks that I've hired with that tend to act tend to do well in terms of like the, the framing of the business questions that come in, which are often fairly ambiguous. So, I think that combination, the passion, like, both having the technical skill set and the passion towards application, um, as well as even the, you know, the soft skill aspects, those are actually the three buckets that I hire for. Um, Really stood out in terms of having the strengths and in all three, kind of what we consider the the data science unicorn or the um the Conway Venn diagram that you might see for a data science as well.
Interviewer Insight
Again, this is incredibly vague and high level.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
Raising the bar for a company as a leader requires the ability to operationalize the process by which talent is identified and grown. The candidate failed to materialize this categorization of their work with regard to the highlighted team member. Most notable was the continued altitude being way too high for any serious evaluation of an executive level candidate. Without any anchoring content demonstrating a repeatable process (other than nods to company level principles) it would be very difficult to advocate that this candidate has demonstrated mastery of Hire and Develop the Best.