Test a candidate's values live instead of asking about them

1. Make each value something a candidate can show

Operationalize it. Asked how to tell whether a candidate is aligned with your core values, the answer is that you want to operationalize your values. Take each one and ask how somebody would demonstrate it in an interview.

Test live. In one interviewer's practice, no questions about the values are put to the candidate, and "tell me about a time" questions are not part of the interviews. Each value is tested live, in the conversation itself. That interviewer's own values serve as the example, and each test below goes by the sort of value it probes.

Flag: questions about values, or none. SOP 268, the page on gating each interview step, sets out interview steps in section 2, and there the culture step has you ask candidates questions about behavior that link to your values. The practice here puts no questions about the values to candidates at all, and leaves out "tell me about a time" questions: each value is tested in the conversation. This page does not settle which reading is right.

2. A value about competing to win: watch the pay conversation

Pay is the test. In this view, the biggest test of a value about competing to win comes when you negotiate pay. On one team, the people who hold that value most strongly are reportedly not the ones who push for the highest pay when pay comes up. They push for the most growth. So there is no need to ask about it: the candidate has to back the claim with their own money.

Show, not tell. The opposite is pictured as someone who claims the value and says they want to win, while arguing for double the salary. What that person wants, in this reading, is money. Candidates show you where they stand once you reach the pay piece.

The question. One practice here is to ask candidates whether they would like more variable pay or more base pay. Whenever someone picks more base pay, that practice reads them as holding the value less strongly than others, because, it is claimed, the people who hold it most strongly always want the variable pay. They want to show the interviewer they can win, and they will back themselves any day over the safe base.

3. A value about candid feedback: deliver some during the interview

Give it, do not ask about it. People ask candidates to describe a time they got hard feedback. The alternative here is to deliver hard feedback there and then, during the call, and watch what they do with it.

How it runs. In one practice, the interviewer tells the candidate the one thing the team has flagged as a red flag for them, and asks why they think the team would call it that. Then the interviewer watches the response, called here the best thing in the world. The team gives the interviewer a lot of feedback about the interview process, and this is how the interviewer learns whether a candidate is candid. Do they tell the truth, or turn defensive? What do they do? The way they respond shows whether they hold the value, and once again nothing has been asked about it.

Asking about a red flag is also on SOP 174 — Standardize selection and the founder's final interview, section 9, as one person's habit after watching the earlier interviews. This page adds the flag put to the candidate as the team's view, the question of why the team would say it, and the reply read as a test of candor.

4. A value about character: go first, then ask about life outside work

Lower the guard. For a value about character, called a favorite here, one practice is self-deprecation. On the call the interviewer will usually go first with it: no one is flawless, all of us have our vices, and so on.

Then ask. Next come questions about their time away from work: any hobbies? How do they spend their weekends? One example is a candidate who, once told it is fine, describes last weekend's conduct, and it rules them out: that candidate is not hired.

5. Judge the way they answer

Words tell you little. The point drawn from all of this: what candidates say does not matter. Their answers will be whatever they guess you are hoping for. The work is to bring the value out where you can see it while you talk with them.

A candidate noticed. One candidate told the interviewer that hardly any questions had been asked. The reply was that questions were not needed to judge culture fit; it could be seen in what the candidate was demonstrating without knowing it was being looked for.

Build the values into your questions. What decides it is the manner of the answer, not its content. So think about how to weave your own values into the questions you ask candidates. Anyone can do this, it is said.

6. Entry-level hires and buying into the culture

Sometimes the most bought in. Asked how to win the buy-in of entry-level staff to the culture, the view here is that they are, actually, sometimes the most bought in, since newcomers have not yet been trained into bad behavior.

A zero against a minus five. In this view, an entry-level hire arrives with a clean slate, at like a zero (offered as a guess). Executives and leaders, on this scale, start somewhere like five, six or seven. But sometimes that means a negative five, six or seven, because they have learned bad behaviors at other organizations unlike the one hiring, and those are behaviors not wanted in that company. Taking someone from zero to 10 is a lot easier than taking someone from a negative five to 10.

The opportunity. So, in this view, some of your best opportunity lies with entry-level hires: once they arrive, you can train them in whatever way you choose.

The exception. That said, if they are hired into an entry-level role with long experience of such roles behind them, that might be worse. You then have someone at a negative five, in a job with little in the way of resources to train them.

The same caution about experience from elsewhere appears in SOP 148, section 8, the page for a business of a few people, where a hire from a much bigger company sometimes brings habits that cause issues.

7. What this page does not decide for you

• Tests for your own values. A test is shown only for each of one interviewer's own values. How to build one for a value of a different kind: Not established on this page.
• Whether one answer decides. The practice here reads a base-pay answer as a weaker hold on the value. Whether that answer, or one defensive reply, is enough to turn someone down: Not established on this page.
• Where the red flag comes from. The team gives the interviewer feedback about the interview process; how the team reaches the flag it names: Not established on this page.
• A role with no variable pay. How to run the pay test where the role offers only base pay: Not established on this page.
• How to train an entry-level hire into the culture. Not established on this page.

8. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	For each core value, work out how a candidate would show it in the conversation, rather than asking about it
2	Test the values live, as one interviewer does, instead of asking "tell me about a time" questions about them
3	For a value about competing to win, ask, as one interviewer does, whether they would like more variable pay or more base pay, and notice who argues for growth over the highest pay
4	For a value about candor, deliver hard feedback during the call; one way is to put to them the red flag the team saw, ask why they think the team would say it, and watch whether they tell the truth or turn defensive
5	For a value about character, one interviewer usually goes first with some self-deprecation, then asks about hobbies and weekends
6	Judge the manner of each answer, not its words, and think about how to weave your own values into the questions you ask
7	Look on entry-level hires, as one interviewer does, as some of your best chances to train people into the culture; if they arrive with much experience in such roles, that might be worse

9. Where this sits

• Finding the values you really hold, and treating them as non-negotiable: SOP 260 — Make your values non-negotiable and find the ones you really hold.
• The interview steps these tests sit inside, and selling the vision at the close: SOP 268 — Gate each interview step, then sell at the close.
• SOP 174 has every interviewer put the same questions to every candidate (section 3) and gives culture fit a score for each core value (section 6). Which questions to ask is not set there.
• Bringing a new hire up to speed once they join: SOP 270 — Onboard every hire against a written plan, then keep them growing.

10. What this page does not cover

Interview steps, scoring rubrics and employment law, including the law on what you may ask a candidate about life outside work, are not covered on this page.