One of my most interesting jobs was building a Technical Support team from scratch. I was the first person my manager hired, and our goal was to grow the team to 25 people as quickly as possible.



The economy was still in rough shape, and our company was in a college town. This led to a really unique dynamic: we had far more candidates than we could possibly hire, and all of them had strong technical backgrounds (recent engineering and computer science grads, some Masters grads, and the occasional Phd).

I interviewed several people a week, and quickly found I couldn’t use their resumes as any sort of real tool because all the candidates were so technically savvy. So I focused almost exclusively on interviewing for “fit”—I wanted to know how they would work with me, with customers, and with our team. This meant asking questions without caring about the content of the answer so much as its formulation and delivery.

The curveball

One day, I happened to be in a very small conference room where the interview candidate really couldn’t see anything but me and the wall behind me. It was really, really tight. A candidate came in and sat down, and we talked about his background for a few minutes. Then I threw him a curveball:

“We’re in a pretty small office that has a drop ceiling in it. So there are a bunch of tiles and a few lights above our heads right now. Without looking up, can you estimate how many tiles are in the ceiling?”

I didn’t care what answer he gave (I had no idea how many tiles were up there). I wanted to see how he formulated his answer to a crazy question. This mattered because customers call into Technical Support with questions just like this all the time. “I logged into the site and it didn’t work. Can you fix it?” “What do you mean ‘didn’t work’? What happened?” “It isn’t there.” “What isn’t there? What did you expect to see? Can you tell me exactly what you did to get there? What did you click?”

In this case, the candidate immediately looked up at the ceiling, then back down at me and gave an answer. He hadn’t listened closely and ignored the only constraint I gave him. Not a good sign. We didn’t hire him, and moved on to the next candidate on our list.

I know this seems harsh, but Tech Support calls are a lot like an interview in that tiny little room: customers will tell you all kinds of useless details, but they won’t let you see the ceiling. So how do you figure out how many tiles are up there?

There’s no one true way to get the answer, but it’s important to listen carefully, acknowledge the constraints, and formulate a plan.

Things to consider when preparing for an interview

I’ll leave you with a few tips to help you stand out in your next interview: