so Paulo interview marathon recruiting
for the next MBA class we hardly had a
minute to breathe between one interview
on the other suddenly my colleague comes
into my office you can feel some sort of
anxiety on her face and she says I
cannot take the next interview I know
the candidate very well I’ve had many
interactions with him so in order to be
neutral can we swap interviews his name
is Daniel
I said sure no problem
I had to read his application quite
quickly as the guy was already waiting
for me at the lobby and then walked and
went to greet him so after the usual
chitchat before starting an interview I
asked my first question who is Daniel he
said I have no idea at that time I
really didn’t know how to react usually
when you have in front of you a
candidate you know about him as much as
his applications tells you but you know
more or less who the other person is so
I found really shocking that the guy
that had put together his application
didn’t know who he was so I said but how
come you are Daniel and he said no I’m
so at that time I started freaking out
I’ve been Admissions Director at ESA for
six years interviewed more than 2,000
candidates from 64 different countries
and never had a situation like this so
my immediate reaction was to start
looking at the corners of the office
looking for a hidden camera as I thought
somebody here is having a great time and
it’s not me so to summarize the story
what happened is that we had two
candidates that were identical they
could have been twins so when my
colleague saw Peter at the lobby she
confused him by Daniel which led me to
reading the wrong file and being in
front of a complete stranger so what is
the point that I want to make why do I
start my interviews asking who are you
when you’re interviewing a candidate you
are exposing yourself to the other you
are in some way opening them the door
into your life so it really doesn’t
matter if you’re interviewing to hire
somebody for your team or if you’re
checking if a candidate is right for an
mba program or if you’re hiring a
babysitter in the end the underlying
question is is that person eligible to
be part of my life do I want to go to
work every day and talk to this person
do I want this candidate to be part of
my alumni network do I want this
university student to have the keys of
my home and take care of my children so
when you tackle an interview from this
point of view things change completely
and it really doesn’t matter if you are
the interviewer or the interviewee
because the interview process does not
become a competition of who is the
smartest or who has achieved the most
things but who is the one that can build
more trust so in the end who is a
legible to be part of your life so back
to the question who are you why do I
think this is important if you don’t
know who you are how are we going to
start building that trust how will you
know where you want to go what you want
to achieve and what’s more important how
are you going to achieve it so very
often when I’m asking this question the
type of answer that I get is hi I’m
Katherine I’m 29 I studied engineering I
started working for this company then I
moved to this other company where I got
promoted twice then I changed then I’ve
earned so many awards and then the list
of achievements goes on and on and on
and on and many times I have to stop
them and say hold on is that really who
you are let me rephrase the question
if I ask your mother who you are what
would she say and then the answer
changes completely they become more
personal they start telling you how
ambitious they are also that they have
some challenges and then they have some
areas of improvement that’s the time
even when they start sharing their
dreams and then it’s when the
conversation becomes interesting Iraq
leaders want set day by day what you
choose what you think and what you do is
what you become I really like the fact
that he says what we do last because we
tend to think that we are our
achievements and we
much more than that we are also our
thoughts and our choices so remember we
are one third our thoughts one third our
achievements and one third our choices
which leads me to my next point very
often in an interview we just want to
show the best of ourselves and this is
very natural don’t get me wrong but also
as an interviewer what I want to see is
if I have in front of me
a real human being and guess what humans
make mistakes I know this notion can be
uncomfortable but it’s part of how we
mature life is made of choices sometimes
we are right but sometimes we are not
but it’s not how many times you fail but
also how quickly you stand up and start
fighting again so quite often in an
interview we just want to portray this
magnificent tree so we only want to show
how green our leaves are or even how
strong our trunk is but we forget about
what’s underneath what’s below the
surface and that’s as an interviewer is
what I need to know to start building
that trust I want to learn about your
roots about your value system about your
achievements but also about your
failures because all of these is in the
end what makes us who we are
Peter Drucker once said the better a man
is the more mistakes will he make for
the more new things he will try a while
ago one candidate share with me this
experience he had to trade with some
commodities and he made a human mistake
which would have happened to any of us
but that mistake led him to lose
two million dollars two million dollars
that’s a lot of money so he embrace his
mistake he went to talk to his boss and
told him the situation so he’s both
getting 24 hours to fix that problem and
recover the money and he did but when he
was sharing with me that example I could
really sense how much he suffered how
much he struggled but also how much he
learned and I’m sure that if that
situation comes again he will never make
that mistake again so when you’re having
this type of conversations what you have
in front of you is a much more mature
person and it’s only then when you
connect so remember an interview is
about building trust and that’s the role
for both the interviewer and the
interviewee because it becomes a game of
give and take so we want to learn your
stories what you felt how you reacted
but it’s not so much what you say but
also how you say it quite often I ask
this question to candidates and I say
tell me what is your main trait and the
answer sometimes is I’m a highly
motivated individual so come on many
times I’m tempted to say really and
highly motivated I don’t believe that
but once I ask a candidate to share with
me an experience where she had to
communicate bad news she was a
consultant so in my mind I thought that
she was going to share with me a
situation where maybe she had to tell
the client that there was going to be a
major delay in the project or maybe that
it had to restructure much more than
what was previously scoped but then her
facial
rushon change completely I could really
tell that she was having a very hard
time sharing with me that experience and
she was also on the verge of tears so
what happened is that her boyfriend had
had a car accident a few weeks back and
she was the one having to break the news
to his parents Wow it took me a while to
recover from this so quite often as an
interviewer I need to keep reminding
myself that I’m dealing with people with
their lives when your job is to make
hundreds of interviews every year it’s
very easy to get into interview mode
press play and go through the same set
of questions over and over again and
that’s very dangerous because you lose
connection but you also miss a great
opportunity to be amazed by people and
learn from them and many times during
interviews you also need to be ready to
expect the unexpected
a few weeks back I asked the candidate
what would you like me to take away from
this interview the candidate said my
telephone number actually is not what
you’re thinking she came from a
completely different background and also
culture than mine and she explained I’ve
really enjoyed this conversation and
despite the outcome I would love to stay
in touch so in the end this is what it’s
all about not just doing interviews but
having great conversations conversations
that lead you to connect with the other
to get to know who they really are and
in the end open them the door into your
life
thank you
[Applause] [Music]