3 quick questions

To view this email in a browser, [click here](. INC. THIS MORNING 3 quick questions Good morning, I’ll end this week’s emails as I started them: with some great interview questions. Today’s come from Mary Barra, CEO and chairman of General Motors and thus the head of the largest woman-run company in America. I’ve always found it fascinating the way Barra rose through through the corporate ranks. She has spent her entire career at GM, starting as an 18-year-old intern back when the company was still called General Motors Institute. [Her LinkedIn profile]( is fun to read. It shows a succession of 14 jobs, from "Kettering University Co-op Student" in the Pontiac Motor Division in 1980 to the chairman and CEO position she has held for almost four years now. Among those 14 positions was GM’s global head of human resources. And in her long career, she often says, she came up with three questions that she's always asked during job interviews. As she explained last year at the Wharton People Analytics Conference, she'd even tell job candidates that she was going to ask all three in rapid succession: - How would your peers describe you in three adjectives? - How would your supervisor describe you in three adjectives? - How would people who've worked for you describe you in three adjectives? "Ideally, you don't want the adjectives to change much at all," Barra said, [according to Quartz](. "Because if you're hiring for integrity, you don't want people to manage up differently than they manage down. And, you want people to work just as well with their peers and superiors as they do with their subordinates. This consistency is the key to empowering teams." I've written before about [how Barra changed GM's dress code]( from a 10-page policy to a simple two-word sentence: "Dress appropriately." It seems decisive and smart on the surface. It takes real leadership ability (and maybe a bit of luck) to enforce something that simple across such a complex company. Her three-questions-in-an-interview strategy comes from the same place. HERE'S WHAT ELSE I'M READING TODAY: [Uber posted an absolutely enormous loss]( on Thursday. Stock responded. --Markets Insider This CEO's first hire taught her that [resumes don't matter](. --Inc. [Amazon delivery robots]( are officially on the job. --ZDNet Instagram just acknowledged that [it has a much bigger privacy problem]( than most people thought. --Inc. Jeff Bezos just sold [$3 billion worth of Amazon stock](. Theories abound. --The Financial Times (subscription required) [Tim Cook uses these five words]( to take control of any conversation. --Inc. Here’s an interesting look at [why LinkedIn is so different]( from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the rest. --The New York Times A Tesla owner who saw his car’s range slashed by a software update [has filed a class-action lawsuit](. --Electrek [#GreenShirtGuy speaks out.]( (This is what it’s like to suddenly go viral.) --AP News --Bill Murphy Jr. Contributing Editor, Inc.com Story ideas and feedback actively solicited. Find me at [billmurphyjr@inc.com](mailto:billmurphyjr@inc.com?subject=), or on [LinkedIn]( [Facebook]( and [Twitter](. [Click here]( to forward to a friend. This email was sent by: Mansueto Ventures 7 World Trade Center, 29th Floor New York, NY, 10007, [Unsubscribe]( • [Update Profile]( • [View in Browser]( • [Forward to a Friend](