Chris Hyams has been the CEO of job site Indeed since 2019, and has shared the two creative questions he always asks in interviews
Chris Hyams has been the CEO at Indeed since 2019, with a comfy estimated net worth between $45million (£35m) and $55m (£43m). The millionaire businessman has shared some golden interview tips that could help you land your dream job.
As reported by CNBC, Hyams reveals he does something a bit unconventional when quizzing job hopefuls. Having steered the world’s leading job site, his advice is not to be taken lightly.
After the candidates have been filtered through the initial stages by other company leaders, analysing their skills and experience, it’s time for them to meet Hyams. But this CEO is on the hunt for something more intriguing—curiosity and adaptability.
“It’s funny, the more I do this, the less I’m looking for specific knowledge or experience. The most important thing is curiosity and adaptability, not necessarily what you’ve done”, he explains to CNBC.
To uncover these vital ‘soft skills’, Hyams throws in two juicy questions: “What are you insanely curious about?” or, for a twist, “What do you care deeply about? “
Not stopping there, he also likes to asks, “Tell me a story about when you were really, really sure about something and found out you were completely wrong.”
And here’s the kicker—Hyams gets more excited when these tales stray from generic ‘work talk’. He shared that when it comes to interesting people, he’s all ears for stories that splash colour well beyond the lines of your CV.
“If you can spend 45 minutes talking about baking sourdough and the 57 different recipes that you’ve tried, the experimentation with temperature and hydration…When people have that intense curiosity…it’s just a question of, ‘What else can you fall in love with?”, he added.
The CEO also revealed that he values candidates who can adapt when their plans go awry and take responsibility for it. Echoing Chris’s sentiments, business leaders Mark Cuban and Jennifer Hyams also regard adaptability as a key job skill.
“Anyone who’s never wrong, or anyone who will never admit they’re wrong, is going to be tough to work with. Because everyone’s wrong at some point”, Chris shared.
The Indeed CEO has another unique method of assessing a candidate’s potential success, which involves disregarding CVs entirely. Chris confesses that he typically doesn’t review interviewees’ CVs but prefers to form an opinion based on what the jobseeker tells him.
He doesn’t want his judgement to be swayed by what he reads on paper. “It’s really important for me to try to eliminate as many preconceived notions and just assess a person…. As much as I’d like to think that I am rational and open-minded, I have biases,” he admits.
He continued, admitting that he thinks “everyone has biases”. “I have biases for and against certain schools, certain degrees and certain companies that, no matter how much I work at it, you know, these are just old patterns that I recognise,” he confessed.