Hiring someone with experience is easier often as they have something relevant to talk about. I am hiring a junior / near fresher. So, no revenue operations experience is expected. What things do I look out for? What questions do I ask? Any assignment that you can suggest?

When interviewing someone for a more junior role, I structure my questions using the journalistic "Inverted Pyramid" technique:

1. Initial Questions: Focus on general knowledge and basic skills required for the position (based on the job description).

   • These are the non-negotiables of the position, translated into non-work-specific questions.

   • In a 30 minute interview, I would spend about 10-12 minutes on these types of questions.

   • For example: If I'm hiring someone in Sales Ops, I'd provide math word problems to see how they would calculate/proof commissions calculations. For Dev Ops, ask about familiarity with coding languages and what projects they've done. This section is also where I focus on communication and team skills.

2. Follow Up Questions: Focus on higher level skills related to the position.

   • These are skills that will be part of onboarding for the role; the goal of the question is to see if the person has experience/familiarity with the concepts already.

   • In a 30 minute interview, I'd spend about 8-10 minutes on these types of questions.

   • For example:

     • In hiring an Admin for the team, I found that people said they had Excel experience, but they didn't. So, I created an in-interview assessment. The "follow up" question I asked was for the candidates to de-dupe a list of records. Weaker candidates would sort the list and manually review for duplicates. More experienced ones would use the "Remove Duplicates" function after clarifying the key data points for identifying duplicate records. Either method showed me that they understood the skill; one just required more onboarding than the other.

     • For analyst roles, ask a question like, "How many Snickers bars would fit in a suitcase?" or similar. The idea is to see how the candidate deals with the missing information. Is the candidate asking questions to clarify and provide a more educated response, or is the candidate giving a response based on assumptions?

3. Final Questions: Focus on real-world experience with the role.

   • These questions are "stretch" questions to see if the person has experience with key aspects of the role. For these questions, most of the time you'll just observe how the candidate handles the inquiry and their response, rather than listen for an actual "right" answer.

   • In a 30 minute interview, I'd spend 2-5 minutes on these types of questions. If the candidate flounders on the answer, I let them know that I was just looking to see the range of their experience and it's not a problem if they don't have an answer.

   • For example:

     • In my Admin example, my Final Question was one that involved creating an Excel formula to do a specific calculation (one that was needed for the reporting the Admin would manage).

     • For other roles, ask questions related to scenarios your team/this role will experience. The candidate may have had experience in a different context (school project, team sports etc).