LinkedIn’s favourite interview question

JOB applicants at this firm are handed a marker, pointed to a whiteboard and asked a simple question. How would you answer?

‘And that’s how I got these scars.’

FORGET the cliched interview question, “What’s your greatest weakness?”

When job applicants meet with Brendan Browne, head of recruiting at professional social network LinkedIn, they’re handed a marker and directed to a whiteboard.

“What are you most passionate about?” he will ask the candidate, regardless of what position they are applying for. “Using the whiteboard, explain to me the process of how it works.”

Mr Browne, who has been at the head of recruitment with LinkedIn since 2010, told Business Insider it was intended to be open to interpretation.

“Because it’s a situation that’s a bit ambiguous, they’re going to have to be really spontaneous,” he said. He gave the example of a candidate who might love brewing beer in their free time — they would be expected to use the whiteboard to draw and explain the brewing process.

He said he learned four things from the exercise: what the candidates care about most deeply, how well they can explain themselves, how they think about process, and how they deal with ambiguity.

Referring to a viral blog post by LinkedIn boss Jeff Weiner that the ideal employee should fit into three overlapping areas, “dream big”, “get s*** done” and “know how to have fun”, Mr Browne said the whiteboard exercise helped him get a feel for the three components.

“An interview assessment is hard and hyper-flawed, but really what I want to know is who the heck are you, and what is it going to feel like when you and I are working on a really hard problem and we’re working our asses off?” he told Business Insider.

While candidates are often expecting a question more specific to the role they’re applying for, Mr Browne said gauging their response to the feeling of unease was a “decent leading indicator” of how they would cope at the company.

“Maybe we decide to scrap a project we’re working on or something changes, like it does all the time in business and definitely in Silicon Valley — I want to see how you deal,” he said.

Originally published as LinkedIn’s favourite interview question