Original post by RYAN MATZNER via TNW
Ryan Matzner is the Director of Strategy at Fueled, the leading iPhone application developers and masters of mobile design, based in New York and London. This post was originally published on the Fueled blog.
As Fueled has grown from its infancy to more than 100 employees, I regularly interview many smart candidates who could answer your standard interview questions in their sleep.
While these candidates’ majors, universities, and goals reliably give me basic background information, it’s the deeper insight that makes a candidate stand out. I barely went to college myself. It’s hardly the most important part of a resume.
These tell-me-about-who-you-really-are questions open a window into who the person is, how they think, and what kind of employee they will make.
These are insights I wish I had known back when I first started interviewing people. So for young startups, here’s some food for thought when you start interviewing employees. And for everyone else, maybe this will help you land a job.
What apps can you tell me about that aren’t lame?
We want the apps we make to be trendy, but if your favorite apps are Flappy Bird and Instagram, we have a problem. Tell me about something I haven’t heard of yet.
I like when a candidate knows about apps that I don’t – as long as they’re not lame. And, here’s the twist: Tell me what you would change about this app. “It’s a cool app” is a rather pedestrian opinion.
