The former CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world has just let us in on his interviewing technique, and it’s going to make you think.
After launching TripAdvisor in 2000, Steve Kaufer remained CEO until retiring in 2022. After 22 years in the tech business as the big boss, the 61-year-old has learnt a thing or two.
In an interview with Logan Bartlett for his podcast and YouTube channel The Logan Bartlett Show, Kaufer revealed what his instant turn offs are in an interview and what characteristics he tries to avoid.
First off, Kaufer urges any founders of small businesses to carry out the final interviews for any employee themselves until their company reaches a few hundred people.
One of the first questions Kaufer will ask candidates is: “Tell me about a really hard project, and why was it hard?”
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Seems like a standard interview question, right? But with this question Kaufer is trying to suss out whether the candidate is going to blame their fellow team members or are willing to take some responsibility for shortcomings on a project.
This is an indicator of whether that candidate is a team player.
Kaufer is also listening out for if the candidate cites working overtime as a reason for a project being challenging. For the former CEO this is an instant red flag as it doesn’t match his definition of ‘hard work’.
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When it comes to personality traits, Kaufer is looking for someone who is introspective. To work out whether someone holds this kind of trait, he asks: “Tell me about a project that you’re really happy with and that was viewed as successful”
Once again, seems simple enough. But it’s the follow up question that gets really interesting. Kaufer follows up the candidate’s answer to that question with: “Given that that was clearly a win, if you had to do it all over again, would you do it exactly the same?”
This question Kaufer says, ‘catches people off guard’ and he’s able to tell by the pause and their reaction whether they’ve ever even thought about it.
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This is another red flag for Kaufer, as he explains: “I’m looking for people that, whether a project worked or didn’t, are always in the mind of self-improvement.”
The tech mogul also explains how he loves curiosity in his employees, so will often ask them about hot topics related to the industry. For example, if he was interviewing someone in 2024, he might ask them if they’ve played around with any of the AI chatbots. He’s looking for people who are curious and ‘always interested in learning what’s coming next’.
A lot of CEOs seem to use simple questions to decipher a candidate’s true intentions. Similarly, Elon Musk famously asks the same question in every job interview to determine whether someone is lying or not.