Have you got the ROCC’s?

This is what the best companies are looking for.

This is how the best companies interview.

The tech tests aren’t harder, the sales case studies aren’t more complex, and the interviews are actually more enjoyable for everyone involved. 

CVs are just seen as a guide to reference along the way.

Much more emphasis is on the communication skills learnt, reactive and proactive behaviours exhibited, personal and professional decisions made and evolving motivations

Interviews should be a process to illuminate the above, ascertain whether that profile can be successful in ‘this’ role (or where else in your business) and critically, a pitch! 

You are why a candidate wants to work in your company. A better pitch from someone else is why they really rejected your offer.

Back to how the best people interview and why the best candidates go with them…

After years spent learning how the darlings of the software world hire, this is how I summarise their approach:

Have you got the ROCCs?

• Resilience     (Ash Farugia ? ? ? ?)

• Opinion      – Do they have an opinion? Will they listen to mine?

• Compromise   – How do they lead and/or behave in teams, when things change, other ideas are prioritised, customers don’t want what you’ve created?

• Creativity     – Human ingenuity + AI assistance to solve problems and enhance output.

You can have the sharpest CV, most polished answers – heck, have literally mastered what the company needs help with… but if you ain’t got the ROCCs, you won’t pass go.

Often employers will jump at CVs who tick the ‘on-paper’ requirements, and even make excuses for why this person should be hired. 

Though no matter how technically sound or professionally experienced they are, if they don’t have ROCCs then they can be more harm than good.

So, how do they assess each area?

Resilience:

“We focus on finding “full stack humans” who can work across multiple domains from high-level strategy to detailed implementation, as they require fewer handoffs and dramatically increase shipping velocity.” — Jacob Peters, CEO of Superpower.

Interview Questions:

• What’s the most unexpected failure you’ve experienced in your career? How did you turn it into a success story?

• If you had to learn a completely new skill to save your company in just one week, step me through how you would approach it?

Opinion:

“Our hiring is almost completely built around just going through someone’s life story, and we look for moments when they had to make important decisions, and we go deep on those.” — Tobias Lütke, Founder and CEO of Shopify.

Interview Questions:

• What is the largest professional shift in opinion you’ve gone through in the past 6 months? 

  • (This is re-challenged, and again to test congruency/debate)

• What’s an unconventional idea you believe in? 

  • How would you convince me, a sceptic, to adopt it?

Compromise:

“You have to be very nimble and very open-minded. Your success is going to be very dependent on how you adapt.” — Jeff Bezos

Interview Questions:

• At what point do you concede in a debate or argument?

• What’s your go-to move when tensions are high? Give me examples.

Creativity:

“Two of the biggest challenges in technical hiring are identifying people who are smart but don’t get things done and people who get things done but aren’t smart.” — Reed Hastings, Co-founder and CEO of Netflix. 

Interview Questions:

• If you had your entire company’s resources for one week, what would you create to improve your current industry?

• What’s the most technically complex aspect of your job? 

  • How would you explain it to a 10 year old, and then a 70 year old?

Think about the core behaviours the role you’re hiring for requires. If the candidate’s experience didn’t matter, what would you be testing? 

Try them out.

These skills in both the candidate, interview and organisation will continue to become more critical as AI advances.  

This is what everyone needs to upskill in.