Interview me. Let's turn the tables.

What if, during one stage of your recruitment process, the hiring manager sat down, looked at the candidate and simply said:

“Interview me.”

Ask me anything you want about the job, the team, the company, our problems, our ambitions and the way we work. Tell me anything you think I should know about you.

For the next 30 minutes, you run the interview.

I think I would love this.

What if we switched seats?

Most interviews are heavily controlled by the employer. We have our questions, competencies to assess and our little boxes to tick, and sometimes we become so busy interviewing candidates that we barely leave them enough time to interview us.

But there is another reason I like the idea of turning the tables.

Answers show you what someone knows. Questions can show you how someone thinks.

Knowledge is important. But knowledge also ages. What someone knows today may be outdated tomorrow, particularly in industries and jobs that are changing quickly.

The ability to notice what you don't know, ask a useful question, make connections and keep digging is much harder to fake and much more interesting to observe.

Someone who asks the right questions in an interview may also be someone who asks the right questions once they're in the job.

The next question matters more

Anyone can arrive prepared with a list of clever interview questions. AI will happily give you 50 of them before breakfast.

“What does success look like in the first 90 days?”

Good question. But what happens after I answer it?

Do you move mechanically to question number 2 on your list, or did something I say make you curious? Do you pick up on it, challenge it, ask me to explain, connect it to something else you've learned about the company?

The follow-up question might tell me far more than the prepared one because now I can see what you do with information you've just received.

Not the interview. An interview.

I wouldn't suggest replacing a structured interview, a technical assessment or whatever else is needed to determine whether someone can do the job.

I wouldn't make it the interview. I'd make it an interview.

One step in the process where, instead of assessing candidates against another employer-designed checklist, we give them the steering wheel and see where they take us.

Don’t catch them off guard

I wouldn't spring this on candidates either. I'd tell them in advance:

“At your next interview, you'll be interviewing us. Come prepared.”

Preparation is part of what I'd want to observe.

Did they research the company and look beyond the homepage? Did they read our articles, look at our products, understand our market and think about the role?

Have they prepared twenty generic questions they found online, or have they thought about what they need to understand?

Do their questions have a structure? Do they listen to the answers and follow up? Do they challenge something respectfully? Can they change direction when they hear something interesting? Are they curious?

Giving candidates advance notice matters for another reason. Not everyone will feel comfortable walking into an interview and suddenly being told, “Right. You run the show.”

Some people will love it. Others may freeze. And being comfortable taking over a room isn't necessarily the capability we're trying to assess.

Giving candidates time to prepare doesn't make the exercise easier. It makes it more revealing, because more people get a fair opportunity to show how they think, how they prepare and what they are curious about.

It gives candidates a chance to demonstrate curiosity, preparation, listening, critical thinking, judgement and their ability to navigate a conversation without being spoon-fed the questions.

And it gives them a proper opportunity to assess us too, because we're not the only ones making a hiring decision.

Wouldn't this become one of the most interesting hiring conversations you've ever had, because you took your nose out of your checklist for a while and let the candidate decide where the conversation should go?

Maybe one of the best things a hiring manager could say in an interview isn't another question.

“Your turn. Interview me.”