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Ask Slashdot: Interviewing Your Boss?
First time accepted submitter Uzuri writes "I'm soon going to have the experience of interviewing an individual to be my direct supervisor. I have in mind several things to ask already, especially since I also have the strange position of working as a technical person in a non-technical office and want to be able to be certain that the interviewee understands exactly what that means without coming off as hostile or condescending. What sort of questions would you ask/have you asked the person who was to be your boss? What sort of tells would you look for? What's out of bounds?"
Will you fire me?
Ask him who's the boss? If he says you, give him a big thumbs up!
Give them an example of situations and ask how they would react. I would choose the biggest mistake that I've made at my current job, and the biggest accomplishment. Their reaction will tell them if you want to work with them supervising you or not. You needn't tell them that this is what you personally did, but you know what an appropriate response to the situation should be and can contrast it to what the actual response was at the time.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"On a scale of one to ten, are you a douchebag?"
What is your management style?
What are your job priorities?
How do you think I can help you?
Take notes, because none of their answers will be truthful.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Don't hire your boss, find a different job! The idea that someone is qualified to hire their own superior is so asinine that it could only come out of a corporate red-tape nightmare so awful it is doomed to an epic fail. If the company had any idea about how to manage whatsoever then they would either have someone higher-up the ladder do the hiring or move someone qualified up from within. Run! Run now! Run fast!
Get a web developer
Do you evaluate performance based upon specific goals - that is, lines of code/subroutines/class modules/interfaces/boards/prototypes/thingamabobs built, or something more ethereal, like how well I kiss ass?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
You don't want that.
Sure, sounds like it'd be fun, sleeping with the boss and all. At least until you break up.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The pain in the ass about interviews is that nearly everybody is looking to please, and trying their damnedest to give the answer that they think you want to hear.
So you need sort of roundabout ways to get to the questions you *really* want answered. But before you even get that far, you need to figure out what qualities you'd like to see in a boss.
For me at least, the ideal boss is:
1. competent
2. professional
3. willing to shield me from the political BS that is part of his job
4. knows when to leave me alone (most of the time) and when to get on my case (once in a while)
5. understands what I do and the value of it, even if he can't necessarily do it himself
6. knows what I'm better suited to accomplish than he is, and is willing to leave those tasks/decisions to me
There's more, but that covers a good chunk of the basics. That list might suit you, but then again you might have something totally different in mind. The important thing is to have some clue of what you're looking for first. As far getting to know whether or not a potential supervisor has these traits, the best generic way I know of is to ask about prior experience and how he's handled specific scenarios.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I'm a software dev, and I could do a decent evaluation for anyone from architect down to data-entry, but I don't know that there's anything in my background or skill set that would mark me as being especially able to evaluate a manager based on their day to day duties.
That being said, what I could look for that's important for my manager to have that affects MY day to day duties - which is going to be the minority of what they do - is awareness of the technical processes, awareness of technical limitations, and a reasonable shot from the hip estimate of costs and risk they think a given task will require.
I have had managers who have asked me to get a remote server with no external access email us when they or their internet connection goes down. I've had folks who don't understand that if I push a change of a major subsystem directly into production after working on it for only a few hours, it could very well take down all customers. In many cases, these folks won't be able to justify or even consider the costs for refactors, or for separate test environments, but it's a little late after they've told their boss's boss they'll hit the deadline and now you're on the hook for it.
Beyond those things, just check to see if his management style gels with how your company like to work. Some folks like teams, some like seclusion. Some managers are hands on, some are hands off. Some like rigid project plans, others prefer desk drive-bys. Make sure that their style is good for your company, and for you.
why the fuck aren't YOU being considered for the position?
if you're qualified to interview and evaluate candidates for that position, you yourself must also be qualified -- even more so because you are already an employee there, know the company, its policies, procedures, customers and other workers.....
Reject any management candidate who has job-hopping in their history. If they spent less than 2 years or so in their last three positions and the companies they worked for are still around, odds are good there's a reason behind all that shuffling, and it indicates that said manager never really got to know his or her team that well.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
There is an SI derived unit, the antidilbert. An antidilbert is measured in radians/gram, i.e. one radian of average pointiness per hair point for each gram of hairgel. This model has been criticized as not sufficiently accommodating managers who are simultaneously incompetent and trendy.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Ask him if he knows what is a PHB
In my previous position, I wasn't on the committee, per se, but gave an operational tour to each candidate and tried to explain what we did and our job functions. One candidate didn't seem to pay much attention and was eliminated because he wanted too much money. Another candidate thought he knew more than I did about our operations since he had glanced at our website and walked around the building before the interview. The third candidate was able to understand what I was saying to him and asked good questions about what we did. This casual back and forth was helpful in assessing his demeanor and grasp of technology. He was a manager, so he wasn't actively managing servers and such, but knew what I was talking about and not just buzzwords. I was able to recommend him to the committee and I left his department seven years later with a good reference. Things that stand out to me about people, especially managers: proper dress, profanity during the conversation, excessive sarcasm, and any hints of poor anger management. I may be old school, but I want a manager that doesn't yell or swear at me during our interactions and isn't sarcastic.
If a candidate finds technical questions threatening or condescending, you probably don't want them as your boss. You want someone who's okay with the fact that you have more technical knowledge than they do, but is still able to speak (and listen) intelligently about technical subjects.
I was actually the only member of the IT dept in the interviews for our Director of IT position some years back. I was also the only person involved in the process that was not on the existing executive management team.
I think a lot of it depends on who else is in the room. If there are any other department heads involved, note closely their interaction with YPNB (your potential new boss). I found that to be quite telling in that you see what is important to them, and if YPNB has any intelligence, they will pick up on what is expected of them and what the others are looking for. By being involved in this, I was able to pretty much garner what projects we would be working on during the first 6 months after he was hired.
As others have stated, HR or someone else may run the show. The only thing you might want to consider is this: if YPNB requests a laptop or projector for any type of presentation, hook it up, but do something wrong (leave a plug loose etc). See how YPNB reacts to the unexpected and how the interaction goes when either they or you "fix" the problem. I don't know of any other way to really get a read, because any questions from HR (or you) are likely to be met with "correct" answers.
Also, with the boss I ended up with, we had a laptop setup and he wanted to show something off a thumb drive. At that time, the NIC port was wide enough that you could put a USB drive in it. He did. And so I went to the laptop, noticed what he did, and quickly put it in a USB port without saying anything. He showed his stuff, and ended up getting hired. He was nervous about the interview, but was very gracious about the whole thing. He is still my boss today (6 years later) and while not perfect, we could have done a lot worse. He was a unanimous choice (they even let me vote).
Cold hard logic is how you do it. Passion is why you do it. If you don't have passion, you must have another motive for doing it (or otherwise the cold hard logic would tell you not to do it). However if you have primary motivation (i.e. passion) to do something, you tend to do better work than if you have only secondary motivation (e.g. you only do it to earn a lot of money). Also, if you don't have passion, you are more likely to leave early for a better job if things don't go well, while with passion, you are more likely to try to fix things.
Of course too much passion may also be bad, in that you might not be able to let a failed project end. As in most cases, both extrema are bad, and the best point is somewhere in the middle.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Do you understand the acronym "PEBKAC"?
Connery or Moore?
Episodes IV-VI or I-III?
Shirt or skins?
Can I have a raise?
I said "CAN I HAVE A RAISE?"
Depends.
No brain, no pain.
You were sacked because a test system died? I think you had more issues that you imagine.