For understanding their personality: If I interviewed your siblings and 3 best friends and asked them to describe you, what would they tell me? (2/11)

For understand their career journey: What was your decision-making process to join/leave your last 3 roles? (3/11)

For understanding their strengths: If I asked your past managers and colleagues to tell me what you do exceptionally well compared to others, what would they say? (4/11)

For understanding their weaknesses: Imagine you could work with the perfect partner to start an ambitious project together. What kind of person would you be looking for to best complement you? What skills would they have that would balance you? (5/11)

For understanding their growth: Imagine the you of today met the you of 3 years ago. What are the top three things you've learned that you'd want to teach the you of the past? How did you come to learn those things? (6/11)

For understanding their taste: When was the last time you experienced a product/design/technology that you felt was truly excellent? Why? What specific decisions do you admire from its creators? (7/11)

For understanding their proactivity: Tell me about the most impactful thing you did to address a problem you saw that nobody expected you to work on. What happened? (8/11)

For understanding how they approach feedback: What was the best piece of feedback you've ever given to a colleague? Why do you consider it the best? (9/11)

For understanding how they manage conflict: Can you describe a time when you or your work was adversely affected by the behavior of a colleague? What was the situation? What did you do? (10/11)

For understanding their motivation: How would you stack rank the following in terms of what matters to the most to you right now in considering a role? Compensation Learning People and work environment Nature of the work Career trajectory Something else (11/11)

I always remind myself that spending an hour with someone gives me a *tiny* slice of who they are. So trusted references count for way more than an interview. Biases, time spent on reflection, communication skills, etc all sway our understanding of others.

Still, we can make the time we do have higher-signal with a curious mindset and a better set of questions. Have other favorite questions or resources? Please share below! :) Fin.

Also: if you want to get a once-a-month e-mail summarizing my weekly Twitter threads, sign up here: https://lg.substack.com/

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@joulee Yes! Great questions and I feel you. I geek out on this too as an ENFJ. Enjoy interviews, deep conversations w/ strangers. Possible terms: Hobby Socialogist, or even just plain ol People Person. Diff kind of question set but have you heard of the 36 questions to fall in love?

@jennMchoi Oh yes, I've built a side project inspired by 36 questions in the past :)

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@joulee This is great!

@joulee If you want to know someone, give them time. Send your questions and let them respond over several in-person meetings. You'll get better quality. This will help defuse the power dynamic of an interview which distorts all their responses. -

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@joulee wow!! loved this thread.

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@joulee This is great! Thanks for sharing

@joulee Love these Julie!!

@joulee sonder

@joulee These are great questions. I'm going to use some of them in my upcoming interviews. Thanks for sharing, Julie :)

@joulee How valuable do you find questions like “If I asked X about you, what would they say?” Isn’t it asking for their impression of other’s impression of them? Does it reveal how they want to be seen?

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@joulee Nice interview questions. When interviewing and asking a question, I also remind myself to be conscious of how I'll evaluate the answer. It's easy to get down paths of discussion that are interesting but not very applicable to finding out what you need to know.

@joulee There are a few more motivators than the ones you’ve mentioned - the moving motivators exercise is one way of learning motivations; https://management30.com/pract... best done as a team building exercise.

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