Interview questions
Best questions from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk at the bottom.
More common ones here:
1
Tell me about yourself.
2
What is your greatest strength?
3
What is your greatest weakness?
4
Why should we hire you?
5
Why do you want to work here?
6
Tell me about a time you showed leadership.
7
Tell me about a time you were successful on a team.
8
What would your co-workers say about you?
9
Why do you want to leave your current role?
10
Describe your most challenging project.
11
Tell me about something you’ve accomplished that you are proud of.
12
Can you explain your employment gap?
13
What are your salary expectations?
14
What do you like to do outside of work and what have you learned from these activities?
15
Tell me about a time you had to manage conflicting priorities.
16
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
17
Describe your leadership style.
18
Tell me about a time you failed or made a mistake.
19
Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult person.
20
Tell me about a time you had to persuade someone.
21
Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone.
22
Tell me about a time you created a goal and achieved it.
23
Tell me about a time you surpassed people’s expectations.
24
Tell me about a time you had to handle pressure.
25
Tell me about a time you had to learn something quickly.
26
Do you have any questions for me?
What's the most important thing you've learned from a peer and how have you used that lesson in your day-to-day life? focus but can I use it to change?
37. What are 5 ways to speed up Domino’s pizza delivery?
31. What’s the first job you had, that's not on your resume, and what did you learn from that experience?
This question is one of Maryann Kongovi’s favorites. “It relaxes the candidates and leads to fun conversations about summer jobs,” says the VP of Operations at Algolia. But there’s intention behind it as well. “I always come away with better insight into their values and perspectives on work itself.”
32. Why shouldn't we hire you?
34. Teach me something.
7. What motivates you to work?
This one comes from Varun Srinivasan, former Senior Director of Engineer at Coinbase (where he had front-row seats to the company’s wild ascent and came through the other side with a valuable collection of lessons on scaling).
“On its face, it’s a simple question for the interviewer to ask. But it requires a tremendous amount of thought and introspection from interviewees,” says Srinivasan. “I’ve found the asymmetric nature of it unlocks valuable discussion. Great candidates will be able to articulate their intrinsic motivators and reflect on why they've worked at startups before — or upack why they want to break in. Less-than-stellar candidates won’t wade into that self-inquiry. They’ll provide surface level answers such as ‘I like hard technology challenges.’”
Jopwell co-founder and CEO Porter Braswell opts for a similarly open-ended question: What does success mean to you? “I find that asking questions like these makes the candidate pause and think,” says Braswell. “That helps drive a more organic and free-flowing conversation where I get to know the interviewee and what drives her on a deeper level compared to going through her resume.”
8. Looking back on the last five years of your career, what’s the highlight?
According to Michael Vaughan, this question is more powerful than it seems. “It tells me what type of person they are, what matters to them and how they think,” says the former COO of Venmo and current EIR at Oak HC/FT.
“For example, if they tell me about a personal accomplishment, then I know personal career development is a huge area of focus. If they tell me about the accomplishment of a direct report or the team, then I know they care about developing people,” says Vaughan. “If they tell me about a company feat, then I know that they tie their own success to the company's success — which is a great mentality for weathering the early stages of a startup.”
QUESTIONS ON THEIR FIT FOR THE ROLE:
9. What are you really good at, but never want to do anymore?
Bryan Mason, Chief Business Officer at VSCO, is a fan of this question because it gets candidates to do three things:
Bryan Mason, Chief Business Officer at VSCO
Reflect on what they've learned about themselves.
Test their ability to speak with humility about being “good” at something
Talk about stuff you may find valuable on their resume, that they in fact no longer want to do.
“It’s amazing how often people answer saying they never want to do exactly what I’m hiring for in this role,” he says.
There are incredible candidates who excel at exactly what you’re hiring for. The trouble is that they don’t want to do it anymore.
10. What’s the difference between someone who’s great in your role versus someone who’s outstanding?
When interviewing candidates for LendingHome, co-founder and CEO Matt Humphrey is on the lookout for a keen understanding of the difference between A+ performance and what he calls “A+++”.
“I always follow-up with: 'Can you give me some specific examples of this in your career and the results you saw?' I look for how they answer the question just as much as the content of the answer itself,” he says. “The best candidates can answer almost immediately, maybe even with a wry smile because they know exactly what I’m getting at and they’re proud of doing something that was truly above and beyond.”
11. How did you prepare for this interview?
When he asks this question, Jonah Greenberger is testing for three things: proactiveness, resourcefulness and passion.
“Those qualities are critical for almost any position,” says the CEO of Bright (a First Round-backed company). “I also like that this multi-purpose question is so open-ended. It gives room for candidates to show how concise, creative, and clear they are.”
12. What do you believe you can achieve with us personally or professionally that you can't anywhere else in the world?
Shiva Rajaraman (CTO at WeWork and former VP of Product at Spotify) typically asks this question at the tail-end of an interview cycle.
“I like it because candidates reveal their individual motivations, creativity, and commitment to our mission all in one response,” says Rajaraman. “Often, they haven't really thought about our company or capabilities deeply. The answers here can be revealing as to whether we are truly the best fit. It also helps cement that we are a special place for the person to thrive. Most importantly, if a candidate is able to articulate her ambitions and how we can help her achieve them, we are one step closer to closing her.”
Questions about why someone wants to work here and take on this particular role may seem routine, but they’re incredibly important. Often, candidates are fleeing something else and haven't thought deeply about what they want next.
As the Corporate Communications Manager at Looker, a company that’s put tremendous thought and care into bringing new people on board, Tamara Ford John similarly recommends digging into what makes candidates passionate about the specific opportunity in front of them. “I always ask candidates, ‘Why do you want to work here? Why do you feel you will be good at this position?’” she says.
“I've found that the specifics of why someone is drawn to your company and believes they’ll succeed in a given role are often overlooked. It’s incredible how many times I’ve seen people fall down when it comes to answering these questions in interviews.”
13. What are the three most important characteristics of this function? How would you stack rank yourself from strongest to least developed among these traits?
14. Tell me about your ideal next role. What characteristics does it have from a responsibility, team, and company culture perspective? What characteristics does it not have?
15. It's September 5, 2024. What impact on the business have you made in the year since you’ve joined?
Scrappy = combative/rebutant/décousue. He’s scrappy but he gets the work done
QUESTIONS ON WORKING WITH OTHERS:
16. Tell me about a time you strongly disagreed with your manager. What did you do to convince him or her that you were right? What ultimately happened?
17. Tell me about the best and worst bosses you’ve ever had, specifically, in your career. What was the difference?
18. What's one part of your previous company's culture that you hope to bring to your next one? What one part do you hope to not find?
19. When was the last time you changed your mind about something important?
20. What's the most important thing you've learned from a peer and how have you used that lesson in your day-to-day life?
21. Tell me about a time you really screwed something up. How did you handle it and how did you address the mistake?
23. When have you felt the lowest in your career? Did you realize how you felt in the moment? How did you respond?
24. What’s one misconception your coworkers have about you?
26. If I were to go and speak to people who don't think very highly of you, what would they say?
27. What’s one critical piece of feedback you’ve received that was really difficult to hear? Why was it difficult and what did you do with that information? What did you learn about yourself?
Elon Musk- interviews- the same question: "Tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them." Because "the people who really solved the problem know exactly how they solved it," he said. "They know and can describe the little details."
Musk schools
Whether = soit
“Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can't, you're probably right.” H. Ford
In Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future there is a great section on the single best interview question you can ask someone.
When Peter Thiel interviews someone he likes to ask the following question: What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
This question sounds easy because it’s straightforward. Actually, it’s very hard to answer. It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon. And it’s psychologically difficult because anyone trying to answer must say something she knows to be unpopular. Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.
The most common answers, according to Thiel, are “Our educational system is broken and urgently needs to be fixed.” “America is exceptional.” “There is no God.”
These are bad answers.
The first and the second statements might be true, but many people already agree with them. The third statement simply takes one side in a familiar debate. A good answer takes the following form: “Most people believe in x, but the truth is the opposite of x.”
Here is Thiel’s answer to his own question:
My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more. Without technological change, if China doubles its energy production over the next two decades, it will also double its air pollution. If every one of India’s hundreds of millions of households were to live the way Americans already do— using only today’s tools— the result would be environmentally catastrophic. Spreading old ways to create wealth around the world will result in devastation, not riches. In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.