The CEO of the 'Costco for Millennials' Asks Every Potential Hire 3 Questions to Weed out the Jerks

Boxed CEO and cofounder Chieh Huang interviews every job candidate personally, and says he asks them three questions to make sure they’re not jerks.
The questions are meant to test whether a job candidate is curious, open, and can hold a conversation, and to find out how arrogant they are, Huang told the TED blog.
Huang said the interview is important because people often end up spending more time with their coworkers than their families and friends.

Before you can work at Boxed, the online retailer that raised $111 million last year, you’ll have to pass CEO Chieh Huang’s test.

Huang said he personally interviews every potential hire for the company, making him the “last line of defense” for the company.

But when Huang interviews people, he isn’t looking to hear about their qualifications or their professional accomplishments — he’s simply trying to screen out jerks.

“The last thing you need is someone with a huge ego and that’s super smart but that’s just a complete a–hole,” Huang said at last year’s Iconic conference, hosted by CNBC and Inc. “I still heavily screen for that.”

Huang told Amanda Miller at the TED blog that during his 15- to 30-minute interviews with potential hires, he asks three questions to determine if they’d be good fits:

His first question is “Tell me about yourself, but you can’t mention anything that’s on your resume.” It can be surprisingly hard for job candidates to pull this off, Huang said, but he said he’s really just trying to gauge whether they can hold a conversation and, ultimately, their curiosity and openness.

For example, if the person begins talking about experiences with travel or food, Huang will ask follow-ups such as “What’s the best or worst trip you’ve ever taken?” or “What’s the best or worst food you’ve ever eaten?”

Next, Huang asks candidates “a ‘thought-provoking’ query to test how candidates think on the spot,” the TED blog reported. Huang said he changes up the actual questions in this round, but he likes to choose ones that have no correct answer, such as “Which country will be the first to make it illegal for humans to drive cars? And what year do you think it will happen?”

With this question, it doesn’t matter so much what a candidate’s answer is, but how they come up with it. Huang said he wants candidates to really think about the answer and not simply blurt out the first thing they think of. Do they really consider the premise of the question and “go one level deeper” about its implications, or do they freeze up and say “I don’t know”?

Lastly, Huang tells candidates to “rate your knowledge of technology trends on a scale of 1 to 10.” This question screens out people who may think a little too highly of themselves — Huang said anyone who rates themselves a 9 or 10 get “an instant red flag.”

The way Huang sees it, the tech industry is changing way too rapidly for anyone to really consider themselves an expert, and “folks who feel like they know everything are generally condescending to the people around them.”

Huang said his three-question test is worth the trouble for himself and his fellow Boxed employees.

“The reality is we spend more time, more waking hours with our coworkers than we do with friends and family. If you have a full-time job, that’s the reality,” Huang said at the Iconic conference. “And selfishly, I just don’t want to spend it with folks I don’t like.”