Episode 83

Denitsa Schmidt on Balancing Data and Gut Instinct in Effective Hiring Practices

TIM: We are live on the objective hiring show with Danitsa. Danitsa, thank you so much for joining us today.

DENITSA: It's a pleasure.

TIM: It is absolutely our pleasure to have you on the show. And one area I'd like to start with is something that's always fascinated me which is in hiring you almost have like, what I think of as a spectrum of approaches from one that's. It's kind of very data driven, very metrics driven, arguably more objective. We try to measure everything and sort of make the most rational or objective decision you can make. Other end of the spectrum would be a much more kind of intuitive gut feel based approach where there's a lot of feelings, feelings and fit and culture, the sort of buzzwords would normally be mentioned on that side of the spectrum.

DENITSA: Well,

TIM: And I'd love to get your thoughts on this spectrum. Where you sit where you see different types of people sit, if there's value in kind of using a combination of both. I'd love to get your thoughts on this thing.

DENITSA: for me, it's, do we do you know, on one side is data and this is all facts, and then on the other side you have the gut you have gut. At the end of the story, gut is no magic, right? So, so, gut, it boils down to Our survival instinct, which made us able to pick on clues and our brain goes incredibly fast and tells us, all right, so this is my conclusion. And this is based on your experience. So what you've lived, all the knowledge you have therefore experienced executives. The gut feeling, and I hate to say that because I'm ahead of data most of my time the gut feeling outperforms the data. It, and, and it's incredibly frustrating when I'm on the other side and I'm saying, no, no, you know, I have this data and I've done this algorithm and it's historically based, and then just he comes in, walks in the room, gives a prediction, and that prediction is better. So. That, however, doesn't mean that we should all hire on, on gut feeling because that's not universal, right? The gut feeling is good when you have the right people on it. And that for me is when I started the recruitment process that's the first step. I need to make sure that I have the right people on it to work with me and it cannot be only me because then, then it's, you know, one frame of mind, one experience, one background that is judging the input. I need different people and we complement each other and I need to know that they have enough of an experience. Of, of, of experience to, to actually be able to select for that particular position, for that particular role, for that particular seniority. And then the, that McKinsey very often uses that A chooses A, B chooses B and C and C just, you know, shouldn't be choosing at all. So, so I need A people there. I need to know that they will choose somebody that's better than them. And the next step is to have a process. What that means is not just, you know, one step after another, but consistently applying the same, let's say, procedure to all the candidates that you see, so that you can then compare, even if, if it's your gut feeling, which let's say, if I have the right team, then I say, okay, that's the right gut feeling potential there. But then that gut feeling is to be applied consistently across candidates. If you vary, if you don't have a process, if you vary your questions, if you vary the situations where people are then you can't compare. Then what comes in play is your memory and the most recent memory of the one that stands out most. You will point to that and say, that's my best candidate. Very, very often, when you, you do your selection well or pre selection well, you have candidates pretty much at the same at the same level, right? And, and there you need to ideally just not just rely on memory because it's not fair, right? They should be assessed in, in, in a, in, in the same manner.

TIM: you touched on a few important biases there that are worth thinking about. And these are only a couple of many recency bias for sure. You know, the, More recent candidate probably has some kind of elevation. I can certainly think back to my experience where I'd have a day full of interviews, or I might have, I don't know, five, six, seven interviews, like a lot. Honestly, by the end of the day, I could not remember the first candidate. I couldn't have been able to tell you their name, really. I would have mixed them up in my mind with maybe the third one. And if I hadn't, if I hadn't taken rigorous notes or had some kind of AI note taker, I would have had no clue, really, what their strengths and weaknesses are.

DENITSA: Yeah.

TIM: I might have had a general ultimate binary yes no kind of vibe, but I wouldn't have any ability to evidence that. I certainly wouldn't have any ability to compare and say, well, I don't know, candidate 1 was better than candidate 3 in these ways, and 2 was better than 4 in these ways. So I feel like, yeah, there's a lot of, let's just one example of bias, many, many biases that creep into making ultimately the right decision. But you started off your answer by saying, well, The end of the day, the high performing, experienced executive makes good decisions that can, the quality of their decisions can be measured. However they do it doesn't really matter in a sense, it's, you know, through years of experience and gut feel and whatnot. So that needs to be respected. Part of my thought process here is sometimes that maybe if we just thought a bit more about what they're looking for, maybe we could unpack their gut feel into some actual criterias on paper. That would then allow other people to evaluate that and say, well, you know what, they keep saying this phrase that they say they're looking for a, I don't know, details oriented person. What does that mean to them? Oh, cool. It means X, Y, and Z. Let's then look for that and measure it. So I wonder if it is just like a, there's actually more measurability in there than we think there might

DENITSA: Yes, of course that, that's a given, right? You don't just go with, Oh, I want a team player or a one. good organizational skills. What, what does that even mean? Like you bring it down to actions to concrete something more findable in an experience rather than somebody coming and saying, well, I'm a great team player. It's just that, you know, the rest of the team suck at that, but I'm the best. And it's, it can be an an assessment especially on the soft skills, right? So, so more technical skills in, in, in the profiles that I recruit. You can judge by years spent on concrete technology. You can even go down and, and look at certification. So, but yes, you're building your profile. Is as detailed as you can is important and, and, and you, I think you're right in saying that AI can, can support in, in, in this, because this is a, this is a big challenge for executive for sure, but you know, you bring it down even to, to an HR team, it's a, to a recruiter recruiting team. They, either insecure or, or, or defining it too broadly or leaving it to, oh, but you know, the hiring manager will, will get the feeling whether this guy has the organizational skills or not. That, that's not good enough, right? It we need to go down to the, really detailed definition to, to the actions that compound. So what should he have done to then mean that next time he is in a similar situation will do the same? And, and, and this goes down to, to, to the principle that What you've done in the past is the best indicator of what you're going to do in the future. We can't predict the future, but that comes as close as it gets, right? So you will be digging in the interview, and whether that's a recruiter doing a filter, or me as a hiring manager, or the team going deep into, into technical skills, they will dig to that concrete experience. And Then you have a qualitative element of how is that experience retold to you. They're like, oh yeah, I have to work in a team and I did that. If, if you're not excited about working as a team, even if you have the skills to work as a team, that points to something so that you could take some it could make complete your image of that candidate. My, my team freaks out every time that, oh, but we can't, We don't actually know if we hire this person, are they going to perform well? And they're very scared that I will assess them negatively because they hired this person and this person is not performing. What I always tell them is break it down to what you want this person to to do when, when they're on board. And I don't want you to be perfect. You will never be able to guess. Maybe they'll be better, maybe they'll be worse. But if you know that, if you put the candidate in situations that are similar to, to what they're going to live while on board, then you get a good enough impression. And that's what we're going for.

TIM: That is yes. Crucial. If you could somehow make the hiring process. Similar to the job, like the ultimate would be if you just gave them the job for a week and see how they did. I think McKinsey used to call that the 40 hour interview, but obviously very impractical, but that would give you the true picture. How then do you currently run your hiring process to make it similar to the actual job? Do you give them like a take home test? Do you try to give them like a live problem solving exercise? How do you think about that?

DENITSA: so thanks to GPT now take a home test, get more complicated. The, it really depends on the role. So when I have something that is more technical, then I will rely on portfolio because they usually have the code online and I'll go and look at the and that's. Then I can start from, from there and in the interview have the person explain so why did you do this? Why did you choose that approach? I, we do have tasks that are take home tasks. These, the task itself, we usually do something that is, that we've done before. And that's comparatively easy. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to do. The key is not being able to do it, because you can Google it and do it but how you talk about it. And then we'll ask side questions, so what things you consider here, what other approaches you can have, and so on. We started, I wasn't super happy with this, because, for some reason Canada is getting incredibly anxious while doing this and overdo it at home and spend a lot of time on something that Really, I mean, even if we say 30 minutes, that's it, so it shouldn't take more. But they still take more. Then, then we started doing live coding. Like, hey, if I want to see the sales for October, but taking four years backwards, what would you do? How would you do it? It does stress candidates still. And there's some work in the interview to, to help them come down and not get really worked up. But that, that has proven the most useful, to be honest. That compared with the portfolio, for me, saves a lot of time and and gives me a very good idea what, what they can do.

TIM: And presumably the live coding has come to its fall because a candidate would find it very hard to use ChatGPT and that without telling you, or Claude or whatever. Like you're getting their actual, a closer representation of their actual current skills. Is that part of the value?

DENITSA: when you have to do an, an SQL statement, we just ask them, you know, share your screen and, and give me a note taker and then just write it in there. And, and then it's, it's more, yes, they can use chatGPT on the site and we've had cases like this, but you know, immediately. So we've had cases with a lot of candidates that have chat GPT and I asked them a question and they. Either Google or ChatGPT I don't care what it is, but I know that he is looking for the answer and then reads it. it That's, for me, that's end of interview. Thank you very much. Have a very nice day. I don't care that they know everything. I am more impressed by candidates that will tell me, Well, look, I don't know the answer here, I guess. This is the answer, but I haven't had experience with it or it wasn't it. I don't remember it at the moment that it that for me is pointing to a skill of being comfortable when you're not comfortable and it's important for me That you don't know happens.

TIM: I'd love to just unpack that a little bit more. So if candidates were to tell you, hey, by the way, I'm now going to use Claude to help me solve this problem better. Would that, would you then be open to that? Is it, is it the fact that they're sort of trying to hide the fact they're using AI and pretend like they're not, is that the core problem?

DENITSA: So the pro, look, I'm not taking them. Up to blackboard and you know, now recite me the geography of Polynesia. That doesn't happen in in real life. I use ChatGPT on a daily basis. Because you get requests from the business and questions for the business all the time. Not every time you can you, you can answer from the top of your head. And yes, you need to refresh. The thing is, if you can find a way to refresh that is interesting, that is really helping you solve the problem, that I can use. And I don't need a literal explanation of what. The, well, what products GCP has. Either you know them, you tell me a funny story about one of them. But if you don't know them, that's also fine. Because they're here, I have them on the screen. I can consult them at any point.

TIM: Is there any other bit or any bit of the hiring process where you would really rather candidates not use AI at all? So, like I, I've hired myself recently and one question in our application process was around imagine it was your first day working at a Alooba What are the three things you would like from us to give you the best chance of being successful? And I found a lot of candidates use ChatGPT even for that. Even though it's a very personal thing, that I was really, I really cared about what that individual thought. And so that was a place where I thought I'd rather they not use ChatGPT like I care about them, not what a large language model thinks. So is there any, any bits of the process that for you are out of bounds in terms of AI usage?

DENITSA: Honestly, I wouldn't, I mean, I wouldn't use them in the, in the interview part where it's more, talking about your experience, because I'm interested about how they lived their experience. We have, we usually do more of a get to know each other chat in, in, and there, instead of asking the candidate, so now tell me about the last five years backwards, I asked them, tell me about the moments that you loved most, and this is what I care about. I want to know what stayed in their memory. Because I know, I've read the CV, I can read what they did. I've, in most cases, seen their portfolio by this time, I know what they can do. What I care is, what I care about is, is how they felt about it, what really stayed with them, what they enjoy doing. And then I will know, does it make sense to continue, can I offer this? in, in, in, in our company or not.

TIM: The way you've described interviewing so far struck me as maybe interviewers should be learning a little bit about psychology. Maybe that would be a kind of critical skill, a little bit of those really acute people skills where you're kind of picking up on the subtlety of what someone's saying. Do you think that would be beneficial?

DENITSA: I'm, so I have a handicap there, so that's how I started. From all the Things I studied. I started with psychology, then moved to, to management. I've never studied technology, so I don't know if an engineer will, will approach interviewing like this. But, but I do because I'm looking for a match. And and I know that along the process I'll have a chance to pin down this person with, to, to, for concrete knowledge and, and, and concrete skills. So, what I, I do think that it's important to, to focus on the candidate as a person, and to, to use some of the technique in psychology. It's, it's, it's not it is a science, it's a social science but it's not black and white. Right. One of, I was at the end of psychology, that's four or five years of studying. One of the last classes, they were like, yeah, you know, you. studied psychology, but you can't really predict what a person will do or is or so essentially you know nothing. Good to see you.

TIM: Thanks for

DENITSA: It was, it was frustrating. But it's, it's true, right? So it doesn't give you the security that you know somebody but, but it does give you a feeling of how people will react in different situations and knowing what situations you're gonna, they're gonna be finding themselves and you, you can judge, it's a matter of judging with, from the candidates you have, it's not, you're not finding, you're not, Reinterviewing the whole population to, to find the absolute right, perfect person for the role. You're looking for a match. So the, the whole process, I've used a lot of, like, psychological principles in, in, in designing our processes. I try to put the candidate Exactly in the situations where they would be because as you said, the 48 hour interview is not very practical, especially now where we work remotely. Most of my team has a lot of remote time, so we can't gather. And really observed a person working on the job, but I will put them through decisions that, that he will be asked to do through a team discussion through a working session on, on, on coding. Very reduced, right? So it's, let's look for something. So one, one SQL query, but more one dbt model review, but I will put them through something like this and and that's, and they'll be exposed to. to the team. So can they work together? Because I can have a perfect person if they don't like the rest of the team members, I will have a problem nevertheless, right? So I put them all together working on something and discussing topics and I will tease them and that, that's their reaction and how they find their way through the interview is very important. And that's, yes, that's a psychological element in there. But you Could use a lot of AI as well in the process. Not digging, as you mentioned, that's absolutely necessary because where we fail is in memory, in focus, and, and. That, that's where AI can really support. Breaking down a profile. I have found Chargeptuo Claude useful in break me down the skill into concrete actions. I won't take it one to one, but it helps me already focus my thinking in that direction. So there are a lot of spaces where we can be supported by AI. And we should be. Now that we have that.

TIM: One big area that I think could be very Very much improved using AI, but I don't think it's really spoken about much, but I feel like one of the main meta problems in hiring is that because it's not an automated process that a system runs, it's like a little bit messy and involves sometimes different teams like the hiring managers and I don't know, some external recruiters or maybe an internal talent team. It's It's kind of in spread over different places and it's pretty rare at least in my experience that a company would use a holistic bit of HR tech across the whole company. Normally it's kind of just in HR. It's not necessarily the hiring managers also use it. So things start to kind of slip through the cracks and there's often what I'd call like the moving the goalposts problem where unless you've gone down to the very specific details of like exactly what you want. From the get go, which is a lot of work, I find inevitably you know, at some point in the process, maybe the second third interview, someone will kind of almost like introduce their own criteria. And I think part of the difficulty is it's often done in a very subtle way. So it might be like, Oh, yeah, I really like this candidate, but I'm just not sure they're going to fit in with that team, or they don't seem like a team player. And you might go back and look at the criteria and it didn't necessarily say team player anywhere. But it sounds like a perfectly reasonable bit of feedback. And so I feel like it's so easy for these like slightly subjective bits of commentary to then infiltrate the process and derail it so quickly. I wonder if AUI had full visibility over the whole thing, was deciding each of the steps, deciding who was making the decisions, deciding the metrics. Then it's almost like you put some guardrails in place maybe to make it a little bit cleaner. What are your thoughts on that,

DENITSA: yeah, introducing structure and, and then that comparison that we're going for making it really visible, obvious easy to, to access. So that. Again, it's not only one person looking at it, but it's, it's a whole group of people that are interested in getting the right candidate and, and, and then the, the, they, that will stir the discussion. You want or at least to a degree you can prevent the biases or somebody being, I mean, I also find that somebody went if I have a person in one of the recruiting steps that is very busy, frustrated, or just in a bad place at that time, they will. reject across the board and, and, and I need to balance this and AI there can help. The thing is, I've never seen it done that well. More often. It's not, I mean, we've used Greenhouse and and at the HR or recruitment tools or, or interfaces and, and applications that supposedly do exactly this. But so what happens more often than not is, is they limit in a way. That I have to take more effort to reflect things that are important for the role. Or they, though again we'll have a space and it will say organizational skills. And I know in the profile that I have submitted that I have. Actions can create topics that, that I want to see there. But if, if I have a lump place and, and I will make sure that I break down my, my feedback in, in that space. But not everybody in the process will do. Because we are working people. And not everybody takes good care or has enough time. So if they're not forced into giving. The detailed feedback that we want to compare at the end, they'll write the one liner of, yeah, looks very organized. And then all the effort that's done before is, is lost. But they may have noticed something else that, that is relevant, even if it's not in the criteria, but they can't write it anywhere, so they forget it. So, so having And I'm sure the applications actually can do it. It's just a matter of, in most cases, that would be HR department or recruitment team for them to really be comfortable in that technology and mold it to the way they know. the process or they needs to go because they theoretically are the ones that have the most knowledge about recruitment. They have that psychological and delay or of, of, of concepts in their mind and preparation to be able to interpret. I think the reason why This disconnect happens is that, because I know that they have this knowledge, I, I, when I have the kickoff meetings with them in the beginning, I know what their structure is in, in their minds. But they don't feel comfortable in technology. HR department in general have fear of technology. In my experience, until now, I have not met one single HR person that is not afraid of technology. When they, they, they're afraid to touch it. They say, I don't know how this goes. They use Excel sheet better than Then use a tool that is not, you cannot mold to what you need, need it to do.

TIM: I, yeah, generally agree with your observations, and I've been thinking something kind of similar as a broad generalization around HR and talent teams I've met not necessarily the most metric or data driven either, so maybe it's correlated to the technology interest in that I feel like they would more often than not support more of a cultural fit. Let's focus on the person. Let's do a slightly more intuitive based hiring approach. Then a data driven one and to then connect it to the point you were making. I wonder if it's just the backgrounds that people come from that end up in talent and HR is often not technical. Like it would be pretty rare that someone did software engineering as a degree and then ended up running a talent team or. Hard sciences or whatever, like they'd more come from softer sciences, maybe marketing, these kinds of backgrounds. I think, I haven't actually done that analysis, but that's my perception. So maybe

DENITSA: I mean, it, it, logical, right? And now we look for our comfort zones. The thing that. Catch me is that the application applications that are that even they're more and more that the design specifically for recruitment for HR. It's not, it's not technology. You don't need to know anything about technology. And again, and to give myself or something. example, a bit self centered here, but so I studied psychology and I was director of HR for three, four years. And I implemented tools like this with no knowledge of technology, none whatsoever. And it, I mean, it, it just takes you a bit of thinking and, and, and just. The biggest step in all this was to, that mental barrier that I have that I had about, oh, you know, if I haven't started I haven't studied engineering, maybe I shouldn't be touching this, I'm not allowed, if I don't have a certificate saying that I can code, there's no coding, it's dragging and dropping fields, and it, it's a sophisticated Excel sheet or Access, I'm that old, so I've seen Access. And that's how applications work. It's not complicated. So, and this is, this is. Where I get frustrated that, oh no, but we're not technical. You don't need to be technical. This is not technical. I don't know how to, to, to get to a point where the recruiters will be comfortable in molding their environment to to what they feel comfortable with. And if, if an application like this. So somebody who cracks this comes on the market, that will be an absolute winner in my opinion. And maybe AI is that they is a tool that can get us there.

TIM: I, reasonably recently, in the last, let's say six months, have become quite AI optimistic and I feel like the large language models have progressed to a point where I reckon we're just waiting for the software to be built using these large language models. And the current state of them is already good enough to solve 95 percent of issues in hiring, I think. I feel like it could be largely automated within the next year. Do you think that's possible?

DENITSA: I mean, it, it, it should and I know that. I mean, I think what, what's holding it back is, is concerns that, okay, so now if AI can do this, then what will I do? Just the usual fears when, when, when something new comes on, on the market. But, but yeah, we, we, I think we should go in that direction and I'm, I don't feel afraid. That something horrible will happen and that we will not be able to react in time. But that's, I'm not a deep thinker when it comes to, to making decisions. I, it, when something looks like a good idea, I'm like, okay, let's try that. So, I, I don't think that if you take more and more and more and more time to decide even, I mean, even in recruitment, but you can take that logic to, to any decision, the more time you take, you know, decision is not going to get much better. So there's a saturation point of thinking and predicting possible risks. You have to stop at some point and just make the decision.

TIM: Speaking of making decisions and picking candidates, so you mentioned, yeah, it's certainly far from an exact science, and you can never really get it 100 percent accurate. What about when you're thinking, about a candidate's current ability versus their future potential. Cause it's almost then like an extra prediction there. It's like, where is it? Where is this candidate going? I might be able to evaluate the current skillset, but yeah, where are they going to be in six months or a year or two years? How do you think about that problem? Do you think, well, that's, that's something I can predict by asking certain questions or yeah. How do you think about the now versus future state of the candidate and the job you're trying to place?

DENITSA: I think of that as my responsibility. Because I, you can set up your. Direct reports for success, and you can set them up for failure, or you can set them up for being really parked in where they are at the moment and not move from there. And that's management, essentially. I mean, my contribution is in management. And another point in this is, again, extrapolating past behavior into your best guess for the future. If they have taken opportunities to grow, if they have been interested in, in, in things, but able to focus enough so that they will achieve something in, in, in a, in a, in a concrete skill area or company. That is, these are the predictors, and you find that out by talking to the person. So what, what are you interested in? This. What did you do about it? This. Huh.

TIM: Do you also have a sense of, like, thinking about where your team is going, where the environment is going in, let's say, a year's time, and then thinking how they're going to grow into that? Are you trying to also, like, just understand their motivations? Like, do they, do they want to end up in this end state where you're thinking of this, like, sort of a, again, a matching process? And, and in that sense? Is there some benefit to having, like, very candid conversations with candidates to really, like, not take their answers at face value, like, really dig into, like, what exactly do you want, and then maybe being equally honest with them on the employer side?

DENITSA: It's very hard to achieve. If you start, in my experience I don't want to generalize, maybe, you know, people have better skills than me I bet they do. But if I try to squeeze the candidate into, tell me really what you think I will, Get them defensive, and, and they will try to give me ready made answers. Or feel that I'm suspecting them of something. What, what I do, and that's in the to get to know each other chat, which is half an hour, and it's a bit of a challenge for me. But I, I, Come out with, this is what you're going to get here. Essentially, it's, this is the team, this is the tech stack, this is the practices that we do, this is where we are with the development, this is what you can expect in the next two years, because this is where the company is going, this is what the history of the company has been, and this is the state of the team. So these are concretely the topics that we'll be working on in the next two years. I have to do speech exercises. Before interviews in order to get that out clearly and in 15 minutes, but that firstly answers. 99 percent of the ready made questions. So I save question time and I push the candidates to actually ask me a bit more creative questions. That they have to think about. And, and it also. clears doubts and sets the field to now I've shared what you have to say about it.

TIM: I find that if you can, as you say, cover off those baseline questions, then almost naturally, The next question they come up with is a bit more meaty, like it's actually a bit more nuanced and you're getting into some real, I don't know, area of potential conflict or subjectivity or what have you, hopefully. Sometimes I feel like candidates go the other way and they're like a little bit flustered like, Oh, no, I don't know what to ask. I'll just ask some other thing. But if they really put some thought into it, then you can really get into some, some of the juicy stuff, I think.

DENITSA: mean, at the end of the story, you are looking for those candidates that can, can ask you the juicy questions, right? So the ones that are able to process the information that has been given in very Nutshell, focused, concentrated form, and then direct their mind to something that's relevant. Not everybody can. There's a lot of candidates that just don't progress from that point on even if they have the experience they have the technology I will not go ahead because I need them to be interested and I need them to think on their feet and these are the that first interview puts them in exactly in the position where they need to show that and and if Additionally, there are a lot of candidates that will say I don't want to progress Because then they know what they're getting themselves into. For a data engineer, one of the very important things, for example, is the team. How many, what composition. And, and, they're very good engineers that will not go for the configuration that sometimes we have inside of the company. And I want them to know that. Because I don't want to cheat them into joining the company and then finding themselves in a situation that is Not according to their career plan.

TIM: You mentioned, you kind of touched on one reason why candidates might not make it through, which is maybe they, I don't know, aren't thinking about the role in enough detail or can't ask those articulate questions, can't think on their feet. What would be the most common reasons that a candidate would get to that stage and you would say no? So they haven't opted out, but you've said, you know what, no thank you.

DENITSA: not being interested in, in how we do things. And, and whether we choose one approach or another. If, if the questions I get, and, and this is, so on purpose I don't touch upon this, but home office policies and stuff like this. Cause these are topics I, I, if I get the right candidate, I will shape the policy around them.

TIM: Right.

DENITSA: That's why I'm a manager. It's the, if they ask me, Oh, can I work from home? And I've been talking about 10 minutes ago, I've been talking about what the company is going to do in the next two years. And you all are interested in, in, in whether you're going to be working from home. It's a valid thing. But I have also said that there's a step in the process where you will talk to HR and HR will show you everything about being an employee in that company. Then, you don't need to ask me this question. Then, for me, that means you did not hear me and you're not focusing on the right stuff. It's, I, it may be harsh because employees are, have the right to ask things that go to their own well being. Yes. But they're not really relevant there. TIM: I guess the devil's advocate would be that maybe some of these candidates have been kind of led up a garden path or lied to before by companies. And they've been told, Oh, this is hybrid or this is work from home. And then it turns out not really. And so they're kind of, I guess, trying to find that out as soon as they possibly can, even if it's not necessarily the perfect forum.

DENITSA: Yeah, and I agree. It's, I have, I'm consciously risking that if there is a traumatized candidate that is otherwise really good then, then I will, I will reject them at that stage. For me, take that chance because, again, I know that there will be situations where they will have to moment for a moment disregard what is immediately bothering them and apply their minds to a problem that is related to, to work or to, to a data question or, right? I know that we'll have these situations and I prefer to have a team around me where I know that they're going to be capable of this and I'm going to just block and Until you told how much of a raise they're gonna get, then, then they're not gonna work. I can't afford that.

TIM: That's one of the tricky problems in interviewing in general, I find is that because we have such a small sample size, like even a long hiring process might be four times one hour interviews. It's still only four hours, still such a tiny amount of time to really learn about someone. And so we're almost forced to extrapolate what we see in that hour and take as almost like educated guesses on how then, Oh, that's. This is suddenly giving me a red flag of how they might then react in this other scenario. We don't have any other choice I don't think because we only have those limited few hours we have to do our best. This is one of the, I think one of the hardest things about hiring it's just such a limited data set.

DENITSA: I mean, we there are a couple of errors that candidates do. That even exacerbate the problem in there, right? You do have very little time. Again, it's, you cannot predict what's going to happen. And, and we should drop that as an expectation. And we, we're trying for a fit, for the best fit in the conditions that you are. And and that's not being, I mean, I'm not defeated by this. This is working with the circumstances and, and I, again, in my career, we've done really well with with, with this logic and sometimes you make mistakes, but then you survive, right? It's, it's life, I guess. But if you come to an interview with your insecurities. You will tend to get defensive, and you get defensive, you block your personality, your skills, your, yourself from, from showing. And, and in this very limited time, it's not a matter of really, you know, banging your chest and I am the best. Approaching this as a normal conversation. I know it's challenging and, and I when, when I When I teach teach very small courses in data, we have a class about this about, you know, I'm looking for a job and they're rejecting me and I'm getting a lot of rejections and I don't know what I'm doing wrong and I'm very nervous. I mean, it, the bottom line is you're not doing anything wrong and you shouldn't be nervous. That's what it takes. It takes a lot of interviews to hire and it takes a lot of interviews to be hired. To just a lot of people and a lot of position and a lot of companies. And, and you have to be comfortable with, with the process. And most, most, most importantly is not approach that meeting, that interview. It's essentially a meeting. With your fears and, and, and again insecurities that are really clouding your, your mind. And that goes for interviews as well. But am I gonna guess right? And if you don't, we'll still be here. And there will be tomorrow. So, it's not the worst thing that can happen to you if you misjudge a person. It can get gradually more expensive, but the more nervous you are with this, the more likely it is that you're going to get at the end you're going to miss a detail, because your focus is on something else.

TIM: Great advice and I remember something I read in a book just this week actually. Kind of almost meditative technique where as you come home, if you want to be present with your family, you have like a, a bag where you put like your work worries in your bag at the front door and you shut it and then you walk in the front door and then you're with your family. Tomorrow you get up, you pick up your bag and go to work. The worries that were irrelevant have evaporated. The ones that are still there, you have to go and solve those problems. And I wonder if then as an interviewer and interviewee, just, but yeah. Put your worries in a bag before the interview prepare to have a relaxed, natural conversation and almost

DENITSA: advice, yeah.

TIM: approach,

DENITSA: It is, it is applicable, yeah, I think so. It's hard to do, as you say, you can do from the morning till the evening, one after the other. But it does make sense that you take three minutes before the interview to, you know,

TIM: some deep breaths.

DENITSA: Well, why are we here? What are we going to do? Am I good with this? And then go.

TIM: Yes. Well I think that's a nice place to end actually, cause that's a very practical, useful bit of advice. And I feel almost meditative just thinking about it now. So Danetso, it's been a relaxing and enjoyable conversation with you today. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all your thoughts and wisdom and experience with our audience.

DENITSA: It was a pleasure.