Adam Grant On Interviewing to Hire Trailblazers, Nonconformists and Originals

1. How would you improve our interview process? 
2. Tell me about the last time that you encountered a rule in an organization that you thought made no sense. What was the rule? What did you do and what was the result?
3. Why shouldn't I hire you?
4. It’s your first few months on the job. What questions would you first ask and to whom? 

An original would not just point out what's wrong, he would take actions to make it right.

• Start at the bottom of the CV. Look for people that have multi-functional backgrounds; breadth is critical for creativity.
• Look for diversity of role models  — and distribution of their impact. Originals internalize others' perspective and construct new sets of ideas.
• Uncover roads not taken. Originals are those who demonstrate continuous curiosity, but are willing to move on when there are hardships.
• Make the candidate a culture detective. Assess how candidates view your company culture.

• Present a problem — but leave out a piece of information. Originals don't give up in the face of obstacles; they find ways around or through them.
• Evaluate the response to difficult situations. The originals are the ones who expect that people would be motivated to take initiative and change the situation.
• Ask in which job was he most miserable? Why and how did he deal with it? Even if an original does not like the work, he would still finish it.

• Corral references until they’re candid. You have to put references in a position where they have no choice but to be candid with you. The easiest way to do that is to give them forced choices of 2 undesirable attributes.
• Use a prepared scoring key. It's much more effective to use a sliding scale to assess a person's ability to challenge the status quo, than a yes or no answer. Consider rating them on a 1-5 scale.