Former CEO of Tripadvisor shares biggest interview red flags and answers he looks out for

The former CEO of Tripadvisor has revealed some of his biggest interview red and green flags, and what answers he looks out for whilst questioning potential candidates.

Tripadvisor co-founder Steve Kaufer, who stepped down as the company CEO in 2022, has said there’s a lot more than just a glossy CV, and said there are very specific traits in a person he is looking out for when he goes down a certain route of questioning.

Speaking on The Logan Bartlett Show about interviewing methods, Steve revealed some of his go-to interview questions, and what potential answers tell him about those he’s looking at hiring. One go-to question he said he always asks is: “What’s the hardest project you’ve ever worked on?”

Steve likes this line of questioning as it can give an obvious red or green flag answer. Red flag being if they blame others, and green flag if they show being able to empathise with others. “That can often tell me, are they a team player?” he said. “It can tell me, are they ever taking responsibility for why something became difficult?”

via YouTube

If someone views a task to be hard because they had to work on a Saturday, Steve added it could be “kind of a red flag”. Steve then said he would go on to ask someone how they would refine the hardest project they have ever worked on. He said: “That’ll sometimes catch people off guard. And I can see kind of by the pause — they’ve never thought about it.”

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Steve also said he wants to test how adaptable candidates are, and always wants to know how curious they are, so might ask them about something like AI for a software engineer job for example. He said if candidates are put off by this, or have said they haven’t experimented with new technologies, he will push their application back.

“Software engineers who say they haven’t experimented with AI usually get passed on,” he said. “I probably don’t want to work with that individual.”

So, basically, if you want to impress the big dogs in the world – always show you can evaluate difficulty and take responsibility, be a team player, and be curious. Seems easy, right?

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Featured image (before edits) via Unsplash.