This CEO shares his favourite interview question
Miller places a great deal of importance in the motivation, drive, and intentions behind a person's career move.
Image: REUTERS/Jim Young
Stay up to date:
Future of Work
Nicholas Miller put a lot of thought into quitting his senior associate job at Bain & Company in 2012 to launch his software company Gather. He tells Business Insider that, while his stint at Bain was "by far the best job coming out of college" he could have had and a great learning experience, he and his Bain coworker and Gather co-founder Alex Lassiter knew that, in 10 years, they didn't want to become partners or a management consultants.
"Ultimately, we felt like it was the right time in our careers and our lives to make the jump and give it a shot," he says.
Miller places a great deal of importance in the motivation, drive, and intentions behind a person's career move — it's why he always asks potential hires why they moved from one role to the next during job interviews.
Miller says he's looking for a few things when he asks this: "Why was that the right time? What were they looking to accomplish? And then did they accomplish that at their next job?
By hearing from candidates why they feel now is the right time to look for a new opportunity, Miller says "you can kind of parse people's motivations, but you can also get a good understanding about whether someone's really intentional about their career."
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Related topics:
Forum Stories newsletter
Bringing you weekly curated insights and analysis on the global issues that matter.
More on Jobs and the Future of WorkSee all
Roy Jakobs
January 13, 2025
Ebru Özdemir
January 13, 2025
Navin Chaddha
January 13, 2025
Amit Sevak
January 13, 2025
Amitabh Chaudhry
January 10, 2025
Igor Tulchinsky
January 10, 2025