"How to Hire a Reliable Person Outside Our Professional Field"

This article is Lu Canwei's 83rd original piece.

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Last year on October 24, I wrote a post about how to recruit programmers, but many times we face a question: how to recruit a reliable person outside our professional field?

Resume Screening

Everyone screens resumes from various channels, so as an interviewer, how do we find that resume we think is worth an interview? I don't know if it's because there are too many training institutions now or for some other reason, but many resumes have obvious issues that many people choose to selectively ignore, as long as they meet the recruitment targets.

If I am unwilling to spend time on resume screening, then I can only waste time in the interview.

1. Project and Company Mismatch

I see many resumes that like to list some well-known projects, but the companies they worked for clearly do not match. The first impression is that the resume is fabricated. While I can understand this, I do not agree with it. Even though I understand that the current employment environment is very difficult, even if one passes the resume screening, there is a high probability of being eliminated in the interview stage, wasting one's own time, losing credibility, and wasting others' time. Why bother?

2. Project Duration Too Short

Many people's projects last only 1-2 months. I wonder what can be accomplished in 1-2 months. Internet projects are long-term iterations; if you have worked on many projects that only went from 0 to 0.1, you may forever make the same mistakes, or your skills may not have improved significantly. This is why some people can have 3 years of experience in just one year, while others with 3 years of experience only have the level of one year.

3. Homogenized Project Responsibilities

Many resumes have a problem where the same responsibilities appear in different projects, meaning we cannot find areas for growth and learning in these projects. The tasks are repetitive and similar to previous work. How can employers know what you learned and what you accomplished in these roles?

If you are in a hiring department, if your resume states that you were responsible for backend interface development or writing requirement documents or interface design, how can others know what your advantages are compared to others?

4. Content Details

For example, project timelines do not match the company's work timeline, salary requirements are too far off from work experience, some project descriptions are confusing, and educational timelines do not align with work timelines, among other logically obvious errors.

5. Lack of Differentiation

This means explaining what I did in this matter, how I did it, and what the outcome was. It is hard to see what distinguishes the resume from others, making it difficult to stand out from the resume pool.

6. Others

For employers, it takes time to screen resumes, and generally, a resume should not take more than 10 seconds to review—10 seconds might even be too long. Therefore, differentiated resumes are easier to catch someone's eye. Of course, this information is not absolute; it is just my personal subjective screening criteria. I prefer detailed content and work specifics, as well as some measurable data to observe, along with unique insights and perspectives. However, how to reflect these aspects in a resume is still challenging, and I myself cannot present them well. Additionally, it is best to keep the resume to about 2 pages; more than that is a waste of paper.

How to Determine If Someone is Suitable

1. Past Work

For example, what the candidate has done in previous jobs, what they did, how they did it, and why they did it. These questions can generally eliminate a wave of candidates, as many cannot clearly articulate what they did at work or understand why they did it. It may have been a requirement from their supervisor or another functional role, meaning they were just a tool in their job and did not understand the purpose behind their tasks.

If the candidate can clearly explain what they have done, then we can continue to dig deeper. Usually, after a candidate describes their past work, you can extend the conversation based on the project context. For example, if the candidate is a designer, they will have their own portfolio, and you can ask about current content extensions, such as how to handle user scenarios across multiple platforms. If the candidate is a product manager, you can ask how to further optimize certain metrics after the current version.

After all, since this is not our professional field, many times our questions may be incorrect. This can reflect two situations: the candidate points out your misunderstanding and explains what is correct, or the candidate expands on your question, using correct answers to guide you away from your incorrect statements. Either way, it can directly reflect the candidate's abilities.

Of course, there are situations where their answers to your correct or incorrect statements leave you unable to understand their response, making it difficult to continue the conversation.

You might say you have no understanding of this position, but a universal approach is to ask the candidate about efficiency optimization, such as how to improve ROI on investments, how to enable users to complete the entire business process with fewer steps, how to ensure users can quickly see key information, how to maintain system stability with a surge in users, or how to increase the number of accounts opened by a business development representative from 3 to 5 in a day, etc. All business scenarios can be tailored to the candidate's experience.

During the candidate's responses, assess their ability to break down issues, whether they can grasp the key points of the problem, if their solution logic is coherent, and if they can withstand scrutiny.

2. Potential

Many times, we cannot find the most suitable person, whether in terms of capability, skills, or salary. In such cases, we may need to consider their potential.

There are mainly two aspects: learning ability and interest in the matter.

Why did I not mention other aspects? Because people grow, and every industry requires continuous learning to maintain progress. Therefore, we can present knowledge outside their current knowledge system and see how they grasp it.

For example, we can understand how they collect information—whether through reading, searching, or paid courses—and then observe how they process that information. For instance, after learning something, how do they apply it? Do they organize it themselves? Do they identify behavioral patterns?

The other aspect is to assess their level of interest in the matter. Interest determines how deeply they are willing to delve into the subject. This can be seen in whether they actively seek out related information, such as keeping up with cutting-edge technology trends or exploring the latest apps and market conditions.

Of course, everyone has their own insights about interviews, and differing opinions are welcome for discussion.

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