Questions like “what are you compulsive about?” can sometimes reveal the other person’s elephant. Or: “Where have you experienced a moment of ignition, when you saw some older person doing an activity and you intuited that they were wired the same way you were, and you said to yourself ‘I want to be that’?” Or: “How would your spouse/sibling/parent... See more

An in-person interview is only one input, and not necessarily the most valuable one. Relying on my own impression of people has at times worked out okay, but I’ve found that maintaining humility about one’s own ability to see someone clearly during a one- or two-hour interview in a contrived setting is harder than I thought at first.

I now believe that there is no such thing as an A player in the abstract, across all time, in whatever ecosystem they end up in. The former head of recruiting at Bridgewater, Jeff Hunter, has a great essay in which he points out that former head of Apple stores Ron Johnson was an “A player” by any definition in Steve World (he was on the short list... See more

How did you prepare for this interview?

My goal in this essay is to help others make better decisions on a potential hire, business partner, or even life partner as quickly and as accurately as possible. It’s made up of suggested action steps and some of the ruminations that underlie them

I also try to stick to the default assumption that “everyone is an A player at something.” It’s a more effective and more dynamic way to approach an interview—a live, fascinating puzzle to discover what the elephant and the rider do well—rather than going in with the purpose of determining whether someone is an A player in a binary, Manichean way.... See more

What are the names of your last five managers, and how would they each rate your overall performance on a 1-100?

How would your spouse or sibling describe you with ten adjectives?

One marker that I’m seeing someone clearly is when I understand how their strengths are also their weaknesses, how their genius lives right next to their dysfunction. I know that I’m further away from clarity when I am overly excited or overly skeptical.