Intro call

I dislike interview calls where I am left with a few miserables minutes at the end. A 30 minutes, or even 60 minutes, intro call becomes a very one sided endeavour. I wanted this first contact to be different at Vital. After a brief intro to the company, our product and how we work, the candidate has roughly 20 minutes to discuss anything they like. And when I say anything, I truly mean it - I once had a candidate asking my salary.

I evaluate a couple of things during this session. Are they able to reason about what I said? As in, are they able to dig deeper and be curious about what and how we do things? And is this someone I would like to work with? The latter is difficult to put in words, but am I able to build some sort of rapport with them? The former aims at identifying a person that is genuinely curious about Vital, versus someone that is coming up with generic questions. If just a few, or no questions are asked, it’s an automatic rejection.

Preparation for an intro call at Vital is not necessary - although I recommend doing so. In the cases where no preparation is done, as a candidate, are you truly interested in the company, or is it just one more you applied to?