What can you do today that you couldn’t do a year ago?
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I ask every interviewee: “What’s something you couldn’t do a year ago that you can do today?” It’s the most revealing answer of the entire conversation.
A year ago I couldn’t sauté mushrooms. Now I can. I‘d never sat quietly for 10 mins in my life. Now I’ve practiced mediation for 150 days in a row. I’d never heard of Google Custom Search, this weekend I used its API in a side project.
The year before? I enrolled for a masters at the age of 40, started my blog and opened a small game store with my friend.
The point is I’ll never stop learning and exploring new things. Even - or perhaps especially - things that are currently beyond my abilities.
This is the kind of growth mindset and attitude that I’m looking for when I ask that very loaded question.
I’m hoping to hear them take a deep breath, smile and say: “Well, where to begin!?”
But some candidates look at me like I’ve crawled out of a piece of cheese, scratch their head and give a hollow one sentence answer.
That’s a red flag.
Any new position will require you to learn a ton before you‘re fully productive. So your willingness, desire and ability to learn and grow is much more important than your CV.
Hiring managers should read this Signal vs Noise article explaining how nobody hits the ground running.
The year before? I enrolled for a masters at the age of 40, started my blog and opened a small game store with my friend.
The point is I’ll never stop learning and exploring new things. Even - or perhaps especially - things that are currently beyond my abilities.
This is the kind of growth mindset and attitude that I’m looking for when I ask that very loaded question.
I’m hoping to hear them take a deep breath, smile and say: “Well, where to begin!?”
But some candidates look at me like I’ve crawled out of a piece of cheese, scratch their head and give a hollow one sentence answer.
That’s a red flag.
Any new position will require you to learn a ton before you‘re fully productive. So your willingness, desire and ability to learn and grow is much more important than your CV.
Hiring managers should read this Signal vs Noise article explaining how nobody hits the ground running.