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What Is It Like To Interview A Very Smart Person

The document discusses interviewing a very smart job candidate who had only 3-4 years of experience but impressed the interviewer with his strategic thinking and ability to discuss his work experiences in depth. It also notes that while some very smart people interview in an organized way, others can be all over the place, but the common trait is the ability to see the bigger picture and implications.

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Vince Go
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33 views1 page

What Is It Like To Interview A Very Smart Person

The document discusses interviewing a very smart job candidate who had only 3-4 years of experience but impressed the interviewer with his strategic thinking and ability to discuss his work experiences in depth. It also notes that while some very smart people interview in an organized way, others can be all over the place, but the common trait is the ability to see the bigger picture and implications.

Uploaded by

Vince Go
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is it like to interview a very smart

person?
I interviewed a young man for a job the other week. The normal decision for a first
interview is “progress to second round” or “don't”. This chap I would have hired on the
spot.

We're recruiting to build a team with a specific industry and technology skill set. Because
of the nature of the industry, most of the people we see have 20+ years' experience.
This lad had 3 or 4. In that time, he'd been trusted by his employer to deliver projects in
3 continents, including managing more senior resources and producing the design for a
whole phase of a project by himself.

But what made him stand out was what he could say about the work he'd done. He
could talk about the strategic impact of one project, work through the options for an “if
you were talking to…” scenario, and articulate the social conditions in one country that
led it to need different functionality than another.

And all of this flowed naturally through the interview. Where I had to work hard to get
answers in the right ballpark from some of the more experienced interviewees, this one
was ready with his thinking without it seeming pre-prepared or forced.

The critical thing is that he had thought about what he was doing. Not just for the
interview, but it was clear that as part of his day job he'd thought about the wider picture.

Now, I'm a pretty smart person myself. I'm also a pretty terrible interviewee. I take
questions too literally. I follow my train of thought too much and probably say too much. I
don't always know how to finish my sentences. But I've twice got down to the final two
for C-level jobs outside my own industry and job role by virtue of being able to
understand the two new industries and their strategic challenges better than the 20-year
incumbents I was up against. And I did it by spending a few days reading publicly
available sources on my target companies. (Who, wisely, chose to give the job to people
with much more hands on experience than me).

I use these two examples to illustrate that there's no one template for how a smart
person interviews. Some of them are crisp and well organised. Some of them are all
over the place.

What we have in common is one thing, which is the ability to see - and grasp - the bigger
picture and see the implications. In my experience that's the only really reliable indicator
of a very smart person.

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