I’m Dan Oshinsky, and I run Inbox Collective, an email consultancy. I'm here to share what I've learned about doing great work and building amazing teams.
In the year since I started this job at The New Yorker, I’ve been asked one question more than any other: How do I get a job there?
Here’s what I can tell you: This is unlike any place I’ve ever worked — and probably unlike any place I ever will work. We hire uncommonly smart and talented people.
But it’s not just intelligence and skill that make someone a great New Yorker staffer. The one thing that really stands out about this place is the focus that everyone brings to their work. Editors, reporters, artists, fact checkers, designers — every single person here has that singular focus on their work. The things that my co-workers make are absolutely exceptional, and that’s not by accident: These are people who are driven to be the best in their field, at whatever it is they do.
Whatever you want to do for us one day, you’re first going to have to learn how to be great at it on your own. Be focused enough, and build up the right portfolio of work, and you might get the chance to do it with us one day.
About a decade ago, a friend of mine was asked an unusual question on a job interview: What’s your favorite Bruce Springsteen song?
Now, there are certain scenarios where that question might make sense. Among them: If she was applying for a job in the music industry (she wasn’t), if she was from New Jersey (she wasn’t), or maybe even if she was alive when Bruce Springsteen was still cranking out hit records (again: she wasn’t). She hadn’t brought up a personal appreciation for Bruce Springsteen either. The question just appeared, out of nowhere, for no good reason — and as a hiring manager, that drives me crazy.
When you’re interviewing a candidate, every single question should have a particular purpose. For instance, here’s one of my favorites:
If you’re interviewing for a job on my team, be ready to answer this question: What tools or apps do you use to work?
When I’m hiring, I’m looking for people who are going to be able to work well with my team. If a candidate has the right work habits already, I’m confident that we can teach them the skills and give them the confidence to do great work. So that’s where my question about tools comes in — because the tools you use to work secretly reveal a lot about your work personality.
Or let’s say I decided that curiosity was a trait I needed in a future hire. How might I learn whether or not a candidate was curious? I could ask them: Do you pay for any news sites? Which ones, and why? Or I could ask: What books have you read and loved lately?
If I’m trying to learn how they approach a problem, I might ask: We’ve been struggling with such-and-such challenge lately. Have you ever encountered an issue like that before? How did you solve it?
If I’m trying to find out how they work, I might say: Tell me about your routines, or, How do you handle your work when you have a lot to do?
If I’m trying to learn whether or not they have a mastery of their subject matter, I might ask: Is there anyone in our field who you’d love to get coffee with?, or, Who do you look up to in our industry?
When you’ve only got 20 or 30 minutes to talk with a candidate, make sure you get the most out of that time. Ask questions with a purpose.
I know some hiring managers will ask questions to see whether or not a candidate will freeze up during an interview. (For what it’s worth: I don’t think that’s what the Springsteen question was about. I think that was a case of a middle-aged manager hoping to find a way to relate to my friend, and badly missing the mark.) But I don’t quite understand the idea of asking a candidate, “Why is there fuzz on tennis balls?” or “How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the U.S. each year?” Unless solving trick questions on the fly is going to be part of this candidate’s job, you’re not going to learn anything about their potential fit in a role from those questions — besides, maybe, whether the candidate can BS on their feet.
Keep your questions simple. Ask questions that get to the heart of the candidate: Who is this person? How do they work? What drives them?
Back in 2016, after a trip to Best Buy, I wrote a post about the experience. I’d gone to get a new sound system installed in my car, and after experiencing surprisingly excellent customer service on that visit, I had an epiphany: Why was Best Buy trying to compete with Amazon on product selection when they already had a unique competitive advantage?
Here was my problem, the thing that brought me to that Best Buy a few weeks ago: My car has an ancient sound system, and it was time to install a new stereo that allowed me to plug in an iPod and connect a phone via Bluetooth. Best Buy, it turns out, is still a trustworthy place to handle such a complicated installation.
Here was my Dad’s problem, the thing that brought him to Best Buy last year: He needed a new, cheap laptop, and he trusted Best Buy to sell him one and give him the customer support to install the software he needs on it.
In both cases, Best Buy has a team devoted to helping customers install and use their new electronics: Geek Squad. And for an older generation that uses electronics every day but doesn’t always understand it, Geek Squad — much like their Apple counterparts at the Genius Bar — can actually solve a problem for consumers. They’re a trusted source of knowledge when it comes to professional installation and help on complicated electronics.
Here’s my fix: Rebuild the entire business based on Geek Squad, and the help they can give customers when making an expensive purchase.
Best Buy’s better-known Geek Squad deploys agents to help customers with repairs and installations. The advisors act as, in Best Buy’s language, personal chief technology officers, helping people make their homes smart or merely more functional… They’ve already learned about the devices and appliances they can offer: TVs, sound systems, refrigerators, washing machines, security cameras, doorbells, garage doors, and smoke alarms, as well as Amazon Echo and Google Home and Apple HomePod, and smart shades and lighting and thermostats… [The old strategy was] about getting people into Best Buy stores and onto its website; Best Buy’s future will be about getting its people into homes.
Will Amazon copy the model? I mean, yes — they’re already doing it! But still: It’s exciting to see a big brand successfully make the pivot towards a business model that could work in the long run. Good luck to Best Buy — sounds like they’re onto something interesting.
Early in his senior year in high school, Strong roped a friend from the school paper, Eric Olson, into helping him launch an online radio station. Olson helped with funding and the two split announcing duties while broadcasting their high school’s football games. This was 2002, at the tail end of the dial-up era and three years before the launch of YouTube. No one in charge of the school knew what the pair of friends were talking about, but the principal signed off all the same. A few months later, Olson and Strong were calling Lake Oswego football online, with the help of a computer whiz friend who handled the technical aspects. At the time, there were roughly ten such high school stations broadcasting online anywhere. “Do I have the first clue what I am doing?” Strong remembers. “Not really. I am taking all those years of doing it in my head or out loud at the TV and all the stuff I have heard on the TV and I am sort of trying to figure it out. We didn’t have commercials; it was just us online.”
So you’re hiring for a new role on your team. (Congrats! That’s so exciting!) You’re interviewed candidates, had them talk with HR, and you’ve narrowed it down to a finalist or two. Now it’s time to check their references before making a decision and extending an offer.
Asking questions of a reference isn’t easy. References are usually so positive about the candidate that you don’t always get the honest feedback you’re looking for. But I’ve found a few questions that might help you get the answers you need to make the final decision about a candidate:
How did you previously work with the candidate (as their manager, colleague, etc)? — The candidate may not have explained their working relationship with the reference, so make sure you nail that down first. The more direct the relationship, the more weight you can put on their recommendation of the candidate.
How do they work best? — This gives the reference an opportunity to gush about the candidate’s skills and personality. Let them be enthusiastic — after all, you might soon be hiring this person for your team!
What would you like to see more of from them in the next few years? — If you ask a reference, “What are this candidate’s weaknesses?”, they may not answer candidly. But I’ve found that this question allows references an opportunity to discuss those weaknesses in an indirect way. Listen carefully: If they tell you a candidate could work on a certain skill or trait in the future, that’s their way of pointing out a candidate’s flaws. This question may also point you towards strengths or roles you hadn’t previously thought about for the candidate!
What can we do to put them in a position to succeed? — If you’re going to hire this person, you should find out what you can do to motivate them and help them succeed. Everyone is driven by different things — let the candidate’s former bosses and colleagues point you in the right direction before they start this new job!
Is there anything else I haven’t asked about that you’d like to tell me about them? — This is a neat trick a former journalism professor taught me. Sometimes, when you’re writing a story, a source has something they want to tell you, but you haven’t asked the right question yet to get them to start talking about it. So reporters are taught to ask this question to see if there’s anything left that’s weighing on that source’s mind. Don’t finish a reference check without asking this — ask it, and give them a few seconds to consider. You never know when they’ll open up about something unexpected.
One last rule of reference checks: Keep them short! 10 or 15 minutes is usually all you need from a reference to get the information you need.
Good luck — just a few questions might help you find the perfect candidate for this new role.
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Sept. 2021 update: I saw this thread on Twitter recently, and really loved this additional question from Amanda Natividad: “When was the last time you didn’t see eye-to-eye?”
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my Washington Capitals, and their improbable run to the Stanley Cup. “It’s OK to believe,” I wrote. And because 2018 is relentless, here’s a nearly identical story from the world of sports, this time from the World Cup. This week, England beat Colombia in a penalty shootout — the first such victory for England ever at the World Cup, after three previous heartbreaking losses in penalties. Their manager, Garrett Southgate, was part of a famous penalty shootout loss, at the 1996 Euro championships, when he missed one of the penalty shots that cost England the game.
But as manager, Southgate took that experience and tried to face it head on. The Guardian explained how in an article this week:
Make no mistake, this shootout success belongs to Gareth Southgate. He is unlike every England coach who has faced a penalty shootout in the past: the only one to have missed a penalty for England, and the only one to accept that the penalty shootout is not a lottery; that taking penalties is about performing a skill under pressure; and that penalties can be trained.
Not for him the arrogance, incompetence or fatalism of England coaches past. “You can never recreate on the training ground the circumstances of the shootout,” said Glenn Hoddle in 1998. “When it comes to the pressure we are not good,” said Sven-Göran Eriksson in 2006. “You can’t reproduce the tired legs. You can’t reproduce the pressure,” said Roy Hodgson in 2012.
Southgate turned the trauma of his own experience in 1996 into a vindication of five months’ work preparing for the prospect of a shootout. Funny how we heard similar excuses from the Spain coach Fernando Hierro — “it’s a lottery and we were unlucky” — and Denmark’s Åge Hareide — “unfortunately it was decided by a lottery” — after their shootout defeats at the weekend.
Southgate talked to his players about owning the process, and he worked on the players’ individual technique and team dynamics. He even recreated “the tired legs”, with Kieran Trippier admitting that players had “practised and practised and practised” penalties, taking spot-kicks while fatigued at the end of long sessions. Twenty-eight years of World Cup penalty hurt and all it needed was a bit of practice. Who would have thought it?
They even practiced ways to avoid screwing up the timing of their routines. Here’s one wonderful nugget:
[England goalie Jordan] Pickford also handed the ball to each England player on his way to the spot. This is owning the process, and ensured that [Colombia goalie] David Ospina would not disrupt any players’ routine by making them walk to get the ball.
England won the shootout, 4-3, and advanced to a quarterfinal game tomorrow versus Sweden.
And as much as I love the preparation that Southgate put his team through, his quote after the match was just as fantastic — and reminded me so much of what I heard from the Caps this spring:
“We’ve spoken to the players about writing their own stories. Tonight they showed they don’t have to conform to what’s gone before. They have created their own history, and I don’t want to go home yet. Missing my penalty [at Euro 96] will never be ‘off my back’, sadly. That’s something that will live with me forever. But today is a special moment for this team. It’ll hopefully give belief to the generations of players that will follow. We always have to believe in what is possible in life and not be hindered by history or expectations.”
Well said. I’ll be rooting for England tomorrow. It would be an amazing thing to watch a team defy history and win it all — again.
Being willing to say that you’re ready is a huge step. But it still might not be time to leave yet.
Here’s something I’ve observed: You typically know that you’re ready to leave a job 4-6 months before your co-workers or bosses realize. Your work is still at the same level, and you’re still showing up with good energy at the office. You’re starting to think about the next opportunity, but you haven’t moved on mentally from the current role.
Could you quit right away? Of course. (If things have gotten toxic or particularly bad, don’t wait!) But I’d also advise you to consider one other thing: Is there anything left for you to try at your current job? Or to put it more bluntly: Is there anything you can still get out of this role? Perhaps there are:
-Opportunities to take on one last big project
-Opportunities for public speaking (in public, the press, or internally)
-Opportunities to learn a new skill from your company’s L&D team
Any of those things might give you an opportunity to expand your skill set. And if that’s the case, it might be worth staying a few more months. Those opportunities for growth could help you get to a better place for your next job — whatever it is.
I’ve been watching a lot of the World Cup, and in particular, taking advantage of this unusual video feed that Fox Sports is offering online. Instead of the view from the sidelines, showing the players running left to right, it shows the entire field from behind the goal.
And if you’ve never watched a soccer game from that perspective, you’re missing out on a crucial part of the game. A single player can take over a basketball game, and a player or two can break down the defense on a hockey shift. But soccer is more like chess: It takes a series of moves involving several key pieces to achieve a desire result. The view from behind the goal lets you see the whole field, and how all 22 players fit together.
Here’s some footage from that camera angle in this week’s Uruguay-Saudi Arabia game. I’ll warn you: nothing of importance happens in this clip, but I still find it fascinating:
In particular, I’m fascinated by the movement of the ball. Every move by Saudi Arabia up the field is countered by a shift in the defense for Uruguay — the synchronicity in their movements is beautiful. With every pass, both teams shift in subtle ways, adjusting their formation to the optimal shape to try to score or defend.
It’s a great example of something I’ve been thinking about at my own work: How does my next action affect the work of the team around me? If I communicate well and launch a new product, I can set up a colleague for success. If I fall short, it can force the entire team to scramble to cover for my error. Whatever I do has a ripple effect throughout the organization.
It’s why hiring well is so important — you need to be working with people you trust, people who are going to put you in a position to succeed, and who can build off of your successes. Your actions don’t exist in a vacuum. Your mistakes, your missteps, your victories, your every movement — like on the field at the World Cup, they all matter.
In the waning moments of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, with my Washington Capitals leading the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the team just one game away from advancing to the next round of the playoffs, Caps radio announcer John Walton said a wonderful thing on the radio:
“It’s OK to believe,” he said.
If you’re a Capitals fan, that was easier said than done. The Capitals had been around for 43 seasons. They had made the playoffs in 28 of those seasons — but prior to this season, had only made one Stanley Cup Finals. In 10 of those seasons, the Capitals had held either a 3-1 or 2-0 series lead in a playoff series — a commanding lead by hockey standards — and lost. No team in NHL history compared when it came to playoff collapses.
And yet, there was John Walton on the radio, reminding all of us: “It’s OK to believe.” I think we all needed that reminder — we’d been through so many playoff losses that the idea of a win seemed almost impossible.
The next game, Game 6, on the road, in overtime, the Capitals finally broke through and beat Pittsburgh.
In the next round, down three games to two, the Capitals won two in a row — shutting out Tampa Bay in both games — to secure a place in the Finals.
And then, after going down 1-0 to Vegas, against a team that hadn’t lost three games in a row all season, the Caps won four consecutive games to win the Stanley Cup.
