uncover potential in 10 interview questions

make remote hiring easier.

by jody grunden
building the virtual cfo firm in the cloud

before our firm became a distributed company with a remote workforce, our hiring was naturally limited to a small geographical location – fort wayne, indiana.

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when we really started to grow, we knew we needed to bring in more senior-level accountants to be able to handle the clients we were bringing in at such a rapid pace.

fort wayne has a pool of about 300,000 people, so you can imagine how few accountants there are in that population. the pool was small, especially when we were looking for highly qualified cpas.

when it came to recruiting, we would go to the local colleges and job fairs, but we were a small company and not as attractive as some of the bigger firms that were there at the time. the candidates we were getting were coming to us primarily because they couldn’t get a job anywhere else.

local accounting firms (and the accountants working in them) didn’t really have us on their radar because we weren’t picking up local clients like they were; we were picking up national clients. our ideal candidates didn’t know we existed. we were generating fewer than five resumes per week from our website, and we knew we needed to find a different approach.

we met a representative from flexjobs (which is an online resource for finding remote and flexible jobs) at a remote work conference in 2015 and shortly afterward they interviewed us. not only did we really like them, but as a result of that interview, we were discovered by forbes, and they listed us as one of the top 125 distributed companies in the united states along with some of the big guys like dell, apple and microsoft.

when flexjobs listed our open position, we received 700 resumes within a week! and they weren’t just any resumes, they had come from truly quality people – highly qualified cpas at large accounting firms. from there, we automated our process a little bit more. we were able to get more specific about our qualifications, asking important questions regarding education and salary expectations upfront so we could narrow down the overwhelming list of resumes to the best candidates.

in order to manage this influx of resumes, we developed an ongoing open application system so that even when we’re not actively hiring, we continue accepting incoming resumes. we let applicants know when we’re not actively hiring and tell them that we’ll reach out when we are. this way, whenever we are ready to grow our team, we have an available pool of qualified applicants to choose from, and on average we continue to receive a new resume every day. pretty unreal!

we also developed some structure around screening and interviewing applicants to focus on the following four beliefs that we found to be most important for us and the culture of our company:

1. core values: the most important thing you can do when it comes to hiring new employees is to define your core values and proactively hire people who fit those values. everyone you hire will have an impact on the culture of your company in one way or another. have you ever heard the saying, “one bad apple can spoil the bunch”? this is absolutely true when it comes to company culture. keep your bunch healthy by making sure everyone you hire personally embodies your company’s core values.

2. emotional intelligence: emotional intelligence (ei) refers to a person’s ability to recognize, understand and manage their emotions, as well as the ability to recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others. people with high ei are aware of how their emotions drive their own behaviors and impact others.

emotional intelligence is proven to account for 50-60 percent of overall job success, demonstrating that it’s an essential skill for your team members. people with higher levels of ei have the ability to be aware of and control their own emotions. they work better with others, manage clients more efficiently and help foster a welcoming and accepting company culture.

we believe that it is critical to screen for ei during the interview process in order to build a team that is healthy and successful. we have a minimum ei threshold of 100. the average ei range is 90-100, with 160 being the highest possible score.

3. look for true potential: there are the standard interview questions that you have to cover, and then there are questions that help you get to the core of the person you are interviewing. your goal is to gain insight into who they are ultimately striving to be and whether or not they have the wherewithal to get there. at the end of this post, i’m including a list of sample interview questions that you can use to help identify a candidate’s true potential.

here are a couple of great books that we recommend for every leader and hiring manager:

• “radical candor” by kim malone scott – kim describes “rock stars” and “superstars” that every team needs in order to be cohesive and grow. avoid hiring “no stars” who don’t have the necessary skills, emotional intelligence or work ethic to do the job.
• “grit” by angela duckworth – grit is about having a goal that you care about so deeply that it directs everything you do. you care about it so much that you keep going even when you make a mistake, or you fall down, or there’s an obstacle in your path. hiring people with grit is incredibly important because these are the people who will persevere toward long-term goals.

4. consider collective diversity: diversity is important. our society and our client base are not monolithic … neither should our staff be. when we think of diversity, we tend to think specifically about race or gender. while these are certainly important, diversity is far broader than these two (important) categories.

our initial feelings about a candidate can sometimes cloud our objective judgment. we tend to be drawn to personalities like our own, resulting in hiring a lot of like-minded people which, over time, will result in a short-sighted team. hiring for a diversity of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives, in addition to gender, age, location, and nationality, will make for a healthy, well-rounded team in the long run.

hiring for diversity takes intentionality and an open-minded approach. we run a number of assessments during the hiring process to make sure we have a wide variety of depth and breadth to our team.

we take hiring seriously! we believe that hiring the right people is one of the biggest keys to success for any business. we take the approach of hiring specialists and promoting generalists.

changing the way we advertise open positions and our application system has resulted in the receipt of a tremendously higher number of resumes than we attracted in our early years. last year we received over 2,000 resumes, a large percentage of which were from highly qualified candidates. because we are no longer restricted to our physical location when it comes to hiring, we have the benefit of being able to pick the best of the best, regardless of their location.

determining a candidate’s true potential

10 sample interview questions

1. tell me about a time when you were pulled in a lot of different directions. how did you manage this and what did your communication look like?
2. during your career, what has been the most difficult adjustment you’ve had to make? tell me about the situation. why was it a difficult adjustment? what did you do? what happened as a result of your actions?
3. walk me through a typical day and how you stay organized.
4. describe a work situation where you faced incredible odds but prevailed. what were the odds that you faced? why was there so much resistance? why did you prevail?
5. give me an example of a large problem you solved. note: with this one, we really want to get details of the steps they took and the problems they encountered along the way. this sometimes takes followup questions.
6. tell me about a situation that required you to learn something difficult. why was it difficult to learn? what did you have to do to learn it? how long did it take? what was the end result?
7. give me some examples of things you have done that go considerably beyond what is required by your job.
8. what plans do you have for self-improvement and personal development?
9. what basis do you use for measuring your own performance?
10. sometimes it’s easy to get in “over your head.” describe a situation where you had to request help or assistance on a project or assignment.

posted on december 19, 2020