As part of a company effort to improve their internal hiring process around Project Manager and Program Manager roles, Frog Design  turned to Melina Garda , Senior Executive Recruiter at AC Lion. Speaking via teleconference, Melina met with several senior Program Managers from frog’s San Francisco headquarters to help them devise an interview style and approach that will allow them to assess a candidate’s likely cultural fit, as well as his/her technical aptitude for a particular role.

At the heart of the matter for frog’s Interviewing Best Practices Task Force is the need to gauge how well a candidate will work within the company’s unique environment. “We’re a smaller, agency/consultancy organization with a very creative environment,” said Sandeep Sardana, Senior Program Manager. “Our Program Managers have to be able to implement and manage structure, and also have to be able to do it in a non-structured environment.”

Garda was able to give the company several concrete suggestions to both streamline and magnify their interview process. She suggested they focus more on how a candidate answers questions than what s/he says.

• Use situation-based interview questions – give the candidate a concrete example and ask him/her to describe how s/he would handle the situation.
• Use open-ended questions to assess creativity and flexibility – “Tell me about a time when …”
• Consider including a “difficult” personality in the interviewing process and see how the candidate reacts
• Consider case-study exercises, but only when you can be clear about what you want to learn from the candidate. In other words, a case-study is helpful if you need to see that a candidate can rapidly process certain types of information and then take specific action. As a method to evaluate someone’s work style or personality, a case-study is less useful.
• Seek feedback from recent hires – what did/didn’t they like about the interview process? Consider how that feedback might inform future interviews
• Remember that as much as the interview process is for a company to evaluate a potential new hire, it is just as important for the candidate to evaluate the company. If the “bride” and “groom” don’t love each other, then it won’t be much of a match!

 

Consulting firm frog design works in a variety of arenas. The company’s product and industrial design services have been used by such clients as Apple, ALLTEL, Disney, and Logitech. In the digital realm, frog has designed Web sites for Blockbuster and Dell and developed user interfaces for Yahoo! and Microsoft. Along with design, frog offers brand identity and strategic consulting services. frog has multiple offices in the US, Europe, and Shanghai.