Hiring Managers Look for These 2 Traits During Interviews

Hiring managers may not always be 100% accurate in choosing a candidate, but they are certainly better prepared to make informed decisions based on various factors. They possess the expertise, having studied, worked, recruited, and learned from experience how to assess candidates and make hiring choices. To comprehend how hiring managers select individuals, we need to understand:

How Humans Evaluate Each Other

Even the most seasoned CEO is just a human. They don't actually care about how many tennis balls could fit in an A320 (when such a question is posed).

Instead, the primary focus is on getting to know you briefly and then making a quick judgment.

It's like meeting someone briefly at a party and having a 15-20 minute conversation. You might feel, "I like them...tell me more" or "...excuse me, I need to use the washroom. It was nice meeting you" (implying you won't see them again at this or another party).

This instinctive feeling and judgment is really based on two "C" factors:

1. Comfortability: Do I like you?

2. Competence: Are you good at what you do, or can you become good at what's needed?

In essence, we ultimately categorize everyone we meet into four groups:

1. Comfortability + Competence

2. Comfortability + Incompetence

3. Uncomfortable + Competent

4. Uncomfortable + Incompetent

How to Get Picked

Your goal is clearly: Comfortability + Competence. But how do you achieve that?

Comfortability + Competence judgments are merely perceptions. While you can't change who you are, you can certainly change how people perceive you.

For instance, consider an interview question: “Tell me about a time you influenced a team.”

A typical answer might be:

“OK, so there was this time that I had to work with a group of people on a project. Some of them weren’t that easy to work with, so I really had to influence them to do a better job. Which was super tough because they weren’t that motivated. But after I talked with them, they started doing way better. So that’s how I influenced my team.”

The listener would likely think: This person seems cold (it feels like they're throwing their teammates under the bus) and incompetent (what have they done—do they even know how to work with others?).

This quick judgment from hiring managers shows how swiftly interviewers can assess a candidate. It also underscores the importance of how we narrate our stories. Now consider the same story told differently:

“OK, so there was this time that I got to work with a group of people on a big project—the launch of a new website. I was nervous about it because we all came from different departments—sales, marketing, and engineering. So the first thing I did was get to know my engineering colleagues better by setting up coffees with each person and learning about their backgrounds and goals. Then, when we faced a situation where the engineers weren’t making as much progress as planned, I was able to reframe the new website around their own goals. Seeing the connection between their personal ambitions and our team mission really seemed to set the pace. The result was that we not only hit our deadline, but we actually launched one week early.”

Again, the same high-level story. But notice how the telling changes the candidate from Uncomfortable to Comfortable (“Nice—I’d want to grab coffee with them too!”) and from incompetent to competent (“Wow—they knew exactly what to do and got the results to prove it”).

All through subtle techniques like:

Use specifics: Instead of focusing on the abstract, the candidate brings the story to life with details: a new website, falling behind, coffee chats, a clear result.

Be self-aware: Instead of needing to stroke their own ego, the candidate shows a human and likable side by admitting their nerves.

Go step-by-step: Instead of glossing over the core of the story, the candidate draws a clear connection from the challenge to the response to the specific outcome.

The most important lesson is this: You have the power to shape your hiring manager’s perceptions of you. By doing so, you can control your career destiny, rather than waiting for someone to create an app that lets you read an interviewer’s mind.