Part 3: Asking About Innovations

“Where do you go with this story?” It’s a question we are often asked in our interview coaching. This post is the third in a series that will discuss common “story archetypes” that candidates share, and what kinds of information you are seeking with your follow-up questions in each.

Stories about innovations can be quite tricky to unpack. They come up frequently in interviews with product developers or other "creatives" at all levels, and with people responsible for building new internal processes or systems.

What makes these stories challenging for the interviewer to navigate is typically not the what component (the nature of the innovation), nor the calibration component (the impact of the innovation vs. some appropriate reference point). Instead, the challenge is most often the how part—the factors that led the candidate to the innovation itself. This information is essential, because it points both to the applicability of this prior victory to the new role in question, and to its repeatability.

Let’s say you ask an operations leader about their proudest accomplishment at a big logistics company, and they tell you about a new order fulfillment process their team developed. You have already learned about the "what"/impact of the improvement (moving from a hub-and-spoke model to point-to-point), and you have also calibrated the impact (shortened delivery timeframes to key business customers by X%, improving margins by Y% and CSAT by Z%). Now it’s time to dig into the how.

Let’s examine several paths this could take, and how to navigate each. All of these paths will start with one question: “How did you and your team come up with this new approach?”

Response 1: “The company had been kicking this idea around for years. But nobody had figured out how to actually test it.”

• Insight: The innovation is not the new process itself, it’s the testing of it. There is more uncovering to be done about the testing.

• Potential Follow-up: “How did you and your team figure out how to test it?”...“What was the source of inspiration for that?”...“What did you do next/what was the result?”

• Avoid: No need to dig into the original source of the idea or prior attempts to roll it out, as this is about the company more than the candidate.

Response 2: “It was a member of my team, Anna. She raised it in our Monday all-hands one day.”

• Insight: This may or may not be an innovation story for this candidate, and you may want to move onto the next accomplishment/story it if not. But there may be something the candidate did that is worth exploring.

• Potential Follow-up: “What was your biggest contribution in making Anna’s idea a reality?”

• Avoid: No need to go into depth about how Anna came up with it—you’re not hiring Anna.

Response 3: “We came up with it in a big brainstorming session.”

• Insight: The “how” will come from understanding more about that session—what led to it and what this person brought to it. If it is truly a story about collaborative innovation, you will want to understand how this candidate created the right conditions for it on their team.

• Potential Follow-up: “What led you to have that brainstorming session?”...“How did this idea emerge?”...“What was your biggest contribution to it?”

Response 4: “I had read about this approach/talked to an expert about it.”

• Insight: We have uncovered the how, but we don’t yet know the root cause behind it. We are probably one question away from being ready to move on.

• Potential Follow-up: “What led you to find that book/website/expert?”

• Avoid: Don’t go into too much detail about the book, expert, website, etc. unless this interview is focused on technical skills/knowledge, or you are otherwise intending to evaluate the credibility of their sources.

Response 5: “I was in the shower one day, and it just hit me!”

• Insight: We have uncovered the how, but it’s a tad too…supernatural. Let’s make one more attempt to understand the root cause, and therefore the potential repeatability.

• Potential Follow-up: “What do you think it was that provided the seed in your mind?” or “What do you think led it to be your shower and not someone else’s?”

Sometimes these stories will have more than one component above—i.e., there may have been a brainstorming session, but it really was their idea, and it came from an industry blog they follow. The trick is to stay focused on the candidate’s unique contribution to the effort versus spending too much time learning about other individuals involved, or gathering irrelevant company/industry context.