Pass the “cheats” of the last round of interviews.

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Editor’s note: Finding a job is never a simple process. How do you prepare for an interview when you are experiencing a lot of interviews and are about to enter the final round of interviews with the founders? This translation from the First Round Review article, the original title is 40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know, after interviewing many startups and managers, the reporter summed up the 40 most liked in the interview. Question, I hope to be useful to you.

The 40 questions that the founder liked most during the interview process (1)

Lazy Directory:

Part 1 (1): About Workplace Transitions | About Discovering Motivations

Part 2: About job matching | About teamwork

Section (3): About learning from mistakes | About self-awareness | About others feedback

Part 4: About work enthusiasm | About the “difficulties” in the interview | About the way of thinking | About empathy

At First Round, we always like to understand what is often overlooked or unknown, and explore areas and answers that are not familiar to the founders.

Either way, we want to create a space where the founders and the leaders of the startups can communicate with each other to face the dilemma and how to proceed.

In this context, we have repeatedly found that the communication of these founders always inevitably returns to a topic: recruitment. When it comes to recruitment, you have to mention the interview.

When your startup is in a fast-growing context, the interview seems to be a problem that the founders have to face. However, it is worth noting that the decision to hire someone requires a certain price and a certain far-reaching impact. And spend (most often) a few hours after interviewing others, you have to face a decision, the most important thing is to maximize yourself at the beginning of the interviewSomething learned from the other party during the period.

Of course, we have learned a lot about the best practices for interviews. However, in view of the characteristics of each recruitment “high stakes”, interview skills need to be continuously optimized and improved. This means that the road to finding the best interview question will never end.

Based on this, over the past few months, we have met many successful entrepreneurs and asked them a simple question: What questions do you most like to ask the interviewer during the interview? why?

The following are the 40 most common interview questions we have summarized after interviewing these entrepreneurs. Some of them are short but not fun, while others are exploratory or unexpected.

We classify these common interview questions by topic. Among them, how the interviewer understands the job responsibilities, how to face the worst boss, and why he quit his last job. But more importantly, these entrepreneurs also provide the reasons behind their choice of these issues, and perhaps you can find information that will help you.

About career transition

1. In the next job, have you thought about how to work in a different way than before?

This question is the most popular interview question for Max Mullen, co-founder of Instacart, a fresh grocery shopping platform. In general, he will receive two different responses, and the best interviewer will usually be biased in one direction.

“I found the most satisfying answer, always mentioning their goals, rather than comparing the previous work. If they are not satisfied with the boss or the company, they will not cover it. The question, the main test is whether they are positive energy people, and how they deal with the dilemma,” Mullen said.

“Sometimes, I will also take the time to understand what our company is attractive to them and understand their understanding of the company. Finally, if they mentioned that they are looking for a more challenging job. Then you can also learn how they will be different and what kind of problem they like to deal with.” Mullen added.

2. Imagine yourself three years later, what do you want to be different from now?

Julie Zhuo is the vice president of product design at Facebook. She has also shared with First Round the experience of recruiting designers and the core issues that every manager must ask the interviewer during the interview.

“In an ever-evolving and growing enterpriseIndustry, proper recruitment is the most important thing. She mentioned, “With regard to recruitment, what you have to remember is that it is not a problem to be solved, but an opportunity to build a future for the company.

When we asked Julie and learned about her favorite questions after interviewing hundreds of interviewers over the years, her answers were mainly in the future.

“I will let the interviewer describe the views on self-growth for the next three years. Through this question, I can see his ideals and ambitions, and whether he is always goal-oriented and can see him. Whether it has self-reflection ability,” she said.

3. Why did you resign in your previous work experience? What is the motivation for joining the next company after resigning?

Kevin Weil, vice president of Facebook’s digital wallet Calibra products, likes to gain insight into the interviewer’s professional experience through a unique perspective.

“The reason I like this question is that it allows me to understand how the interviewer thinks when faced with a major decision,” Will said. According to Will, he can further discover the motive behind him by understanding the interviewer’s resignation and joining the story behind another company.

“For example, do they want a stable career or a career that wants to be more risky?” Will said, “Do they want to learn new skills or want to further improve their skills? Their goal is to exercise and improve. Management experience, or hope to further improve the practical ability?”

Well also suggested that you must pay special attention to how the interviewer organizes the language. “It’s also a very interesting process to find out whether their answers are narrative or to highlight the correct choices that have been made.” Will said, “In addition, do they have a sense of the overall situation? Is it capable of telling stories?” /p>

The topic of “workplace transition” is also the topic of deepest link in the interview with Alex Austin, the CEO of the start-up company.

“I found that in the gap between two different jobs, it is time for people to make complete decisions independently,” Austin said. “In this case, these interviewers do not have the help of team members. So you can also gain insight into their ability to think independently at this stage, as well as the motivation behind them. In addition, you can compare their answers to the core competencies required for the position to make a more comprehensive assessment.” /p>

Let the interviewer take the initiative to tell you the story between the different jobs, not the stories related to each job. Through this “window” phase, you can also better understand the aspects they care about and how they choose.

About discovery motivation

4. Who do you most admire among the colleagues who worked together before? why?

On the surface, this issue does not seem to have much to do with the motivation to find it. However, Jules Walter is using this question to understand the motives of the interviewer.

Walter is an angel investor and he is also the product lead for the team collaboration software Slack and the co-founder of CodePath.org, a non-profit organization in computer science education. Most of Walter’s time is spent on the careers he cares about. In addition, he also maintains a strong interest in the value of the drive behind the interviewer’s desire to join his team.

“I want to discover the value of the interviewer. However, I also found that directly asking this question often does not ask anything.” Walter said, “And through this issue, can be a more Ingenious but real enough to understand each other’s driving value. From the interviewer’s appreciation of others, you can find out what they care about.”

5. Please share an active behavior outside of the scope of the previous work? Can you share another similar story?

Brian Rothenberg can be called a master of growth. As the former growth vice president of event and ticketing site Eventbrite, he has shared with First Round the most difficult way to solve the problems associated with business growth, and has shared trial and verification from scratch to IPO. Strategic skills.

Therefore, it is expected that the interview question he asked can help him find interviewers who are willing to break through personal growth.

“I found the best members of the team, they always take the initiative, even if they don’t ask them to do this sometimes,” Rosenberg said. “But after they shared similar cases, The important thing is to ask another similar case story. I hope to find some kind of law through this series of questions.”

6. What was your favorite thing in the previous work? why?

Bethanye McKinney Blount is the co-founder and CEO of Human Resources Consulting, a former engineering lead at Reddit and Facebook. Blount has a lot of wisdom in the construction of the company.

“Proposing this question during an interview allows me to understand two aspects,” Blount said. “First, I can understand what interviewers like and value. These are the most important aspects for them. Second, they usually share some transitional content.”

“They usually say, ‘But it’s not enough…’, then they start sharing something they don’t like with me. I think the second aspect may make people understand more. It will let I understand the aspects of the interviewer’s incompatibility, as well as aspects that are not valued or dissatisfied,” Blunt added.

7. What is the motivation to drive you to work hard?

This question comes from Varun Srinivasan, senior director of former engineering at Bitcoin Coinbase. During his tenure at Coinbase, Srinivasheng also experienced rapid growth of the company and also gained a series of valuable experiences and lessons.

“On the surface, this question is one of the very simple questions in the interview. But it also considers the interviewer’s ability to think and reflect,” Sriniva said.

“Excellent interviewers can share their intrinsic motivations and summarize why they work in a startup, or why they want to achieve a breakthrough. In contrast, the inferior interviewer’s answer is basically Without self-reflection thinking, their answers are often very superficial,” added Sriniva.

In addition, Jopwell co-founder and CEO Porter Braswell also likes to ask similar open questions: What does success mean for you?

“I found that asking such questions would stop the interviewer from thinking.” Blaswell said, “This kind of question can make each other’s conversations more divergent and more meaningful, and let me know more.” Interviewers, understand the deeper aspects of their resumes.”

8. Looking back on your career in the past five years, what do you think is the highlight?

According to the former chief operating officer of mobile payment software, the current investment company Oak HC/FT settled in entrepreneur Michael Vaughan ) said that this problem is more effective than it seems on the surface. “Through this question, I can understand what type of person the other person is, understand what they care about and how they think.”

“For example, if the other person mentioned onePersonal achievement, then I know that personal career development is the focus of his attention. If the other person mentions team achievements, then I know that I care about maintaining relationships. Said Vaughan.

“If the other person mentions the company’s achievements, then I know that it binds personal success to the company’s success, and this is the kind of mentality that start-ups need most.” Vaughan Added.

Extended reading:

Translator: Junyi