- Roger Duguay is a managing partner and global practice leader for CEO and board services for Boyden, one of the world's top executive-search firms.
- Duguay uses job interviews to find candidates who are self-assured without being cocky.
- He wants career qualifications to be a prerequisite for having the interview in the first place, and for the conversation to be an opportunity to assess the candidate's personality.
- C-Suite Insider is a collection of exclusive interviews with leaders of the world's largest companies.
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As managing partner at Boyden, one of the world's top executive-search firms, Roger Duguay has had countless interviews with aspiring captains of industry. His approach to finding top talent has proven so successful that Boyden's CEO appointed him leader of the firm's global CEO and board services practice last year.
This approach includes a break from traditional job interviews. "To me the fact that you've done a good job in the last five, 10 years is not a guarantee anymore you will be the good candidate two years from now," Duguay told Business Insider. Because business across all industries has been changing so rapidly in recent years, he said, he instead looks for signals that the candidate is adaptable and curious.
Over his time at Boyden, Duguay has placed more than 100 people into executive, CEO, or board roles in both the private and the public sector. (He estimated he'd gone through 1,000 candidates.) When he's looking for a CEO, he'll give a two-hour interview with his top candidates. He shared with us some of his favorite questions. And while Duguay uses them to find a new head of a company, they are just as valuable for any experienced hire.
"Tell me about your personal life."
Duguay doesn't necessarily ask this one so directly, but he's getting at what they're like outside the office. This includes things like how they spend their weekends, or even what they're reading.
"I'm going to ask a lot more questions that are going to tell me about the human being behind the role," he said. "Not what you've done and what university you've been to." When Duguay is interviewing someone, skills required for the job in question are a prerequisite for even being in the room.
"If you had to do it all over again, is there anything in the last five years you would do differently?"
"If you're not able to tell me five to 10 big mistakes you've done in the last five years, something's really wrong with you," Duguay said.
He likes to refer to these mistakes as "scars." He's not, of course, expecting a candidate to give an explanation that portrays them as a terrible fit for the job. Instead, he wants to see that a prospective leader is transparent about their mistakes and has drawn lessons from them.
"On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you versus the person you want to be?"
Even though the role of chief executive officer requires confidence, it also requires someone who is humble enough to work with a board and delegate responsibilities to deputies, Duguay said.
When he got a chance to ask one of his personal heroes, Buddhist monk and Dalai Lama associate Matthieu Ricard, this question, Ricard responded with, "Oh, maybe a 4 out of 10." This was just further proof that a job candidate who smiled and gave "9" as an answer was not someone he should be taking seriously.
"Tell me the exact reason why I should not hire you for the role."
Duguay saves this one for the end, and he said it often stops a candidate cold.
"Now I can see in their eyes, 'Oh, do I tell him the truth, because maybe he doesn't know this? Those two flaws — and I really know they are my flaws — am I going to tell him? He's going to add them to this count of flaws ... Or do I just play that answer?'"
He's clearly not looking for an answer of the"My biggest flaw is that I work too hard" variety — and about half the people he interviews give something along those lines. Duguay wants to find someone who is self-assured to a degree where they can open themselves for a moment of vulnerability, rather than make the whole two-hour interview a demonstration of bravado. He wants to find someone comfortable with who they are, and if that personality also fits with what the company needs, then they'll end up with the job.
"I think the key in this life is to be the same human beings you are with your partners in life with who you are at work. Otherwise, you're not authentic, you're trying to play a game to please your colleagues," Duguay said.
"So those are the questions I love to ask and very few people answer them properly. People don't know themselves."
More from C-Suite Insider:
- Here's the tactic Oracle's CEO uses to confidently make tough decisions, even when his team pushes back
- The head of Siemens USA explains why it's making open-source training programs available across industries, as it looks to benefit from a new age of automation
- How Aetna's former CEO found a blueprint for leadership in an ancient Taoist text
This is an updated version of an article that was originally published on May 5, 2020.
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