Interviewing Tip: Ask your applicants to teach you something

The average interview is very little more than an extended version of the infamous conversation, "Hey, Bob, how are you?" "Good! You?!" "Good, Thanks!"

But you aren't average, and neither is your company. It's why you're looking to hire new people in the first place. We want to help break the usual interview template. Raise your hand if you've been here before: you sit for five minutes while someone fetches the boss, then you get a quick handshake and a talk about the drive in before 45 minutes of business. This invariably gives way to a casual chat while both of you try to make a connection, before one last handshake and a promise to be in touch soon. It doesn't happen on purpose, and neither side of the table wants to be a part of "just another interview". But it's really, really comfortable.

Here's one great way to break out of the boring: have every person you interview teach you something. It could be literally anything, personal or professional, as long as they think you don't know it already (we hope no one suggests interviewing tips). Give them ten minutes to come up with a five minute lesson. It's not a new way to grill the poor sap who ambled in the door; the goal is to give them something fresh and fun, and let them run with it. Make sure you frame it that way.

This can get interesting quickly, and may have you walking out of the room speaking French or building the world's best paper airplane. Maybe they spent three semesters in France during college, or their father worked for NASA in the 80s. Odds are, though, you'll learn something about the person which you wouldn't have otherwise. You'll be able to form a better picture of their fit in your company's culture and give them a better, more enjoyable experience in the interview. Being able to build a killer paper airplane isn't a negative, either.

_{You never stop learning.}

There's a fantastic example of this in the very interesting I'm Feeling Lucky - The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Doug Edwards. One of the Google co-founders asks him to do just this, which we loved reading. It's truly amazing how the most innovative and most successful companies always have the most innovative and successful interviewing practices.

That's exactly what an interview should be: learning about the person across the table, how they think, and what they want to accomplish through their work. We all have stories, backgrounds, and a rich personal history; these are things that deserve to be told, yet will almost never come to the surface during the typical interview. Quite simply, the faster and more creatively you can drill down to these qualities, the more successful your hiring will become.