Melissa Tan: belief

Transcript context

…Usually hiring manager screen, and I actually do the live problem solving at this screen. I actually think it weeds out the most people. And there's actually two things I do here. One is a live problem solving. How would you approach X? So let's say I'm hiring for pricing at Webflow, I would ask, "How would you approach pricing?" I sometimes would say, "Hey, do you have your laptop? Can you pull up our pricing page? Curious to get your thoughts, what would you want to change?" That was a trick I learned at Dropbox where we would actually pull up the Dropbox website and be like, "Hey, what'd you want to test here? Why?" And you get a ton of signal on how they approach the problem, how they think. I ask why a bunch. And then the next screen is talking to more folks at the team that test for different competencies. And depending on what you're hiring for, we just have each person focused on a different competency. And it also depends on the roles. So some roles are more technical, some require working more closely with different stakeholders, so you want to make sure you can test those things. And then the final round is the presentation and then also maybe a conversation on other areas. We want that kind of come through the interview process. We want to dig in further. The presentation is usually thinking through how you'd approach, your collecting all this information on the company or the problem throughout the interview process. And so it culminates in what do you think this should look like or maybe what would you want to do in your first 90 days? It depends on the role, but it's usually some type of presentation about the problem you would be working on at the company. Before that, we have that preparation call with me where often candidates will have questions like, "Oh, I need to know this data," or "I'm curious about X." And so it's really just a call to help them. And then at this stage too, they'll often have the actual draft of the presentation and so we'll go through it together and I'll actually be like, "Hey, I think you should lean in heavier here. How would you think about this?" I'll even say for example, at Webflow I'll be like, "We're thinking about X, Y, Z thing just so you know. And maybe incorporating that into your presentation would be really helpful. And so that's where I get a lot of signal of what is it going to be like to work with this person on a presentation? And then I'll see in the presentation whether they incorporate it or not or how they did. And sometimes I've seen candidates that didn't incorporate any of it and I kind of am like, "Okay, this is probably not a fit." And actually I think that other thing about that call is it helps just set the candidate up for success. It's actually quite a lot of work to create a presentation. The more we can help them by giving them information, making sure they can be successful, it's helpful. st set the candidate up for success. It's actually quite a lot of work to create a presentation. The more we can help them by giving them information, making sure they can be successful, it's helpful. And I think guess lastly, it gives them a taste of what it's like to work with me. I've never heard of that step before. That is really interesting. They actually give them feedback before they present. I imagine they're like, "What the hell is going on here?" I thought I was trying to show them what I can do, not like they're going to help me do a great job. That is really interesting. Maybe two very logistical questions there. How much time do you give them to work on this presentation? And then two, you said that you asked some questions related to the actual problem solving versus a theoretical problem. So those are the two questions, I guess.…

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