Thinking Questions
Looks like we're about to hire again! I have very limited experience in hiring and didn't do such a great job last time. One of the problems we have with the current hire is that she doesn't think critically. This is a major factor in success or failure in our company.
What kinds of questions can we ask in an interview to find a critical thinker?
Can anyone recommend a good book for Interviewing/Hiring?
I am committed to improving our process and appreciate all the help we can get.
The very first thing we are doing is taking a hard look at the job, the requirements, expectations and skills needed. If you can suggest other preliminary work, I would also appreciate that.
(For your interest, we are not hiring for my problem direct's job. This is a whole different department, but it cannot afford a similar mistake)
It depends.
I think the questions to ask would depend on the job itself. You could, of course, ask the off-the-wall type of question just to see how they handle such a situation: "How many jelly beans (or gumballs) would it take to fill a 747?" If they spout off a number, you'd have to probe to see how they came up with it. If they pulled it out of the air, that's not a good sign. If they respond by asking more questions - "Are there seats inside the airplane? Or people? What size are the jelly beans? Do we know what the interior volume of the aircraft is and/or how many jelly beans are required to fill a cubic foot?" then you've got yourself a critical thinker.
Otherwise, you could use the straightforward approach: "Tell me about a time when you used critical thinking on a project."
Or you could tailor it to the position for which you're interviewing: "This position relies on solid critical thinking especially when facing XYZ. Tell me about how you've leveraged your critical thinking skills in a similar situation."
Along those same lines, I'd probably also want to know how the candidate utilizes their resources. They may not be required to have all the answers but a successful candidate in my book (especially in light of the critical thinking component) would also be able to demonstrate successful resource utilization. If they can give examples where they were able to track down the right resource or best answer, weighing input along the way, boiling things down to key components, etc., I'd be more inclined to consider them as a final contender.
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DiSC profile: 7-2-1-5
One of my favorites to
One of my favorites to screen for this and a dozen other things is "what's on your bookshelf?" In general, I'm looking for someone that reads about their field, but also reads things that are chewy and worthy of analysis. It's not the only criteria, but it's one of those things like the receptionist identifying winning candidates by their shoes -- I've never had a winning candidate throw me pulp fiction and entry level domain books. I've definitely never had a winning candidate not be "a big reader."
In this particular case, I'd probably also run with some variant of "tell me about an interesting and particularly thorny puzzle you've solved in your previous roles." Asking about a puzzle should be more likely to produce an interesting story or accomplishment than asking about the amorphous concept of "critical thinking." A winning candidate is going to take you through enumerating what they knew, enumerating what they didn't know, and the process they took to convert some of the unknowns to knowns in order to arrive at a solution.