An executive at Indeed shares his ingenious strategy for not hiring jerks

pulse

July 7, 2017 7:21 PM

Indeed senior vice president of engineering Doug Gray has a unique strategy for vetting the best leadership candidates during job interviews.

Job interviews are usually an imperfect method of vetting the best talent.

That's why Doug Gray, senior vice president of engineering at Indeed, likes to turn the tables on the whole process.

When Gray interviews a candidate who is up for a leadership role at the job search engine, he flips the interview on its head and asks candidates to instead interview one of Indeed's engineers.

"A very experienced manager will watch them as they perform that interview," Gray tells Business Insider.

This way, he can actually observe how the person reacts to a real leadership role.

"I call it 'show, don't tell,'" Gray says. "I'm not going to ask you how you would do something. This actually puts you into an experience where you need to show us how you would do things."

He especially keeps an eye out for subtle signs regarding the individual's leadership style.

In Gray's own experience, he tends to look for more collaborative leaders, rather than ones with a more authoritarian, "command-and-control" style.

These signs usually become apparent based on how the candidate treats the engineer.

"There's a power dynamic," he says. "The interviewer has power over the interviewee. Does the interviewer exert and emphasize their power, or do they de-emphasize it and try to draw the other individual out and equalize it so that they're on a more level playing field? That conversation will often tell you a lot."

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