Navigating through interviews — why the human approach matters
I had previously done some mandatory week-long internships at a local bakery and daycare, but when I was 15 I started my first official job search. I was determined to find a summer job and decided to apply to every single store within a 20-kilometer radius. I must have called 30 different locations until the last supermarket on my list invited me for an interview. I was nervous and spent days preparing for the interview. I went to meet the owner with nothing but an empty cv and my eighth-grade class diploma. They asked me if I could start on the first of June at 8 o’clock. We shook hands and that was it. No contract, no information about the salary. That was it.
My first desk job was as a Sales Trainee at TeliaSonera, which I heard about from a friend of mine I met through a football refereeing club. I don’t remember much else from the interview than that there were 3 people interviewing me and that I was terrified. The interview included me calling “a customer” and the goal was to book a meeting with them. I did really well on the assignment and was hired.
My entry into professional Customer Success was when I joined LeadDesk. I first joined them through a recruitment agency, and I had 4 interviews in the process, two with Academic Work, one with LeadDesk management, and one with a team member completely in German since I would be working in the German market and they wanted to make sure that my language skills were up to the task.
I also had a work-related assignment as a part of the recruitment process at Smarp and I kind of got used to the idea that assignments are a part of the process and just something we have to do in order to advance. Still, from the candidate’s perspective, it’s not ideal to spend hours of your time preparing work for a role you’re not sure you’ll get or even want.
Then something changed. For the first time in my career, I felt that I was able to have a real conversation with my prospective employer at Cloud2. Instead of assignments and one-sided interviews, I felt that we were both interviewing each other and being honest about what we both needed and wanted. There was something different about the process. It was more personal and human. I really liked that.
My most recent hiring process was with my current employer Hireproof, a European HR tech startup. I learned about them and their Customer Success Lead job opening from Max, Hireproof’s co-founder when he reached out to me on LinkedIn. I was instantly intrigued because I could see that he had really taken the time to get to know my work history and skills. Also what made a huge difference, was the job posting itself, which was extremely open about the role, salary, and company’s values.
For some time, I have already been quite confident in job interviews but the interviews that I had with Hireproof’s founding team, Max, Nick, and Niklas, were quite different. The questions were very challenging and even though I really enjoyed the conversations we had, I wasn’t that confident. The structured interview was a completely new concept for me since I was more used to either tests or more getting-to-know-each-other types of interviews. I later realized, that the team had completely captivated my motivation, skill set, and personality based on the interviews. They really understood who was joining their team and company at this early stage.
What I’ve enjoyed the most throughout my history with application processes, has been the human factor of it, being honest and open. I feel that behavioral questions can be a great learning experience and you really get to think, about the type of company you want to work for and if it’s a good match for you as well.
Sometimes you end up at the wrong company, and that’s okay. But in my experience, you should be able to see some signs already in the application process. Are you put through a massive screening and testing process? Are one-sided video “interviews” a mandatory part of the process? Are you treated equally with the other candidates? How does the salary discussion go? It’s okay to bring your concerns up or even discontinue the process if you’re not comfortable. You are human. The application process should be as well.
