How to assess a candidate's ability to receive criticism?

Question

In my experience, both personal and professional, the ability of a person to receive and effectively utilize constructive criticism is invaluable. However, it seems that it is something that may not be assessed as often as other character traits are in the application process.

Note: Of course asking them is one possibility, and if that's the best way then fair enough. However, I'm not sure that simply asking someone is the best way of making an accurate assessment.

Related: How to acknowledge project failures but still emphasize my technical abilities in job interviews?

In an interview, what is the appropriate way to answer self-critical questions?

Thus, my questions are:

1. What are some useful ways to ascertain a candidate's ability to handle criticism?
2. Similarly, as a candidate, what would be the best way to demonstrate your ability (perhaps without even being asked specifically about it)?

Answer 1

Standard stressor questions like:

1. Tell me about a time you failed, what did you do?
2. How would you deal with an overly critical coworker?
3. Tell me about a time when a coworker corrected an error of yours.
4. What is the most important thing to do when critiquing a coworker?
5. When was a time you had conflict with a coworker? (Thanks enderland)

Answer 2

Check out common interview questions which ask applicant's about times they've failed, or made mistakes, and how they've dealt with them.

A person uncomfortable with admitting fault will most likely be very uncomfortable answering. This ties in with their ability to take criticism:

Tell me about a time when you did not meet your manager's expectation, either in a review, or in a project.

Does the applicant go into some detail, and actually discuss the case, or does he answer superficially?

I'm sure that there's other websites and articles out there which can give you more ideas.

Answer 3

You'll want to learn about how to perform a "behavioral interview". This type of interview focuses on assessing a candidate's detailed narrative of past projects to infer how they would work in your organization.

Behavioral interviews focus on how the candidate HAS dealt with adversity, difficult people/situations as well as mistakes and criticism in THEIR OWN work experience. These type of interviews explicitly avoid hypothetical scenarios (eg "what would you do if...?"). The idea is that past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. Behavioral interviews give the best picture of what the candidate would be like to work with and they're the best "asshole filter" you can get in a job interview scenario.

Behavioral is the most difficult type of interview for both the candidate and the hiring manager.

Candidates should prepare by carefully practicing behavioral questions which are easily found with a google search. Perhaps even more important, the candidate should compose details of their work history into "S.T.A.R." narratives, either mentally or in writing if it helps.

Interviewers should become familiar with interviewing and easing the candidate into a dialog rather than a rapid-fire questions. Starting "cold" with "Tell be about a time when you were criticized...?" Will get you deer-in-the-headlight looks and stilted answers. Instead, start with a discussion about some project the candidate has worked on, ask detailed questions, then start to focus in on conflict/problems and how the candidate handled criticism. People don't naturally index their memories into short vignettes, but a skilled interviewer can coax these out with such ease that it doesn't even feel like a job interview.

Answer 4

Question 1:

• Please share with me a situation where you made a mistake.
  candidate talks.
• How did your manager or client expressed his/her critiques to you?
  candidate talks.
• How did you feel about this critique? Did you feel their critiques were fair?
  candidate answer about how he/she manages the frustration.
• Finally, which changes did you make to avoid repeating the mistake?
  here the candidate will show if he/she was open to made changes after the critique.

Question 2:

Experience is basically technical know-how plus soft abilities like handling critiques. Hence you need to show that while you were younger you made some mistakes at work, and thanks to the critique and mentoring from your seniors you had the chance to learn and improve in your job. Thanks to that experience you have learn to ask for help and also you are open to critiques, because you have learned that it is quite valuable to get feedback from your boss.

Answer 5

If for a given position, you can create near work environment do so. For example a white boarding problem for software engineer. The candidate will (almost always) make sub-optimal choices, this gives an interviewer an insight into how candidate handles suggestions or criticism. If the candidate overly defends their suboptimal solution, or ignores the interviewer's suggestion it is a red flag.

I believe the above is a better approach than prepared questions because, the interviewer can observe the candidate's reactions to actual criticism, not just candidate talking about criticism.

Answer 6

With exception of @akavall giving them a job-specific test, as well as @santiago clarifying that what you're looking for might be a Behavioral Interview, the other three answers here are pretty much asking them straight out. Or, might as well be, with their transparency.

Having a similar question to you, I found this article: https://qz.com/work/1259470/job-interview-questions-should-also-test-how-a-candidate-reacts-to-failure/

In that article, they say to "give feedback throughout the entire interview process." In other words, criticize the interview itself. Try to keep it to what makes sense for the interview, but things they gave as examples in the article:

• We don't think you've answered our questions
• We don't think you really understand what we do
• Your responses are vague, and seem to be trying to appease

And then see if they become defensive, try to spin / pivot, or if they repeat back what they've learned and move on. It will tell you a lot about how they handle criticism.

Keep in mind that the person is nervous, because it is an interview. And keep in mind that they are interviewing you, too. So, make sure not to trash the tone of the interview solely to assess one piece of a candidate's qualifications.

Answer 7

Give them feedback on their CV / resume and how it could be improved and see how they respond.