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Tips for Interviewing Every Hiring Manager Should Know A few requests from job hunters to interviewers.

By Ross McCammon

This story appears in the January 2016 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

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Let's assume the following: A) You've written a job description that is concise, intriguing and honest; B) you're doing this all on your own, without the help of an HR person; C) you don't have a standardized system of recruiting and vetting; D) you aren't so obsessed with your company culture that you're looking for the exact right combination of personality, pedigree and the answer "honey badger" to the question "If you could be any animal …?"; and E) you have the capacity to empathize with people, generally. Got it? Now here's what interviewees want.

Truly value new perspectives. Candidates should not feel like they're trying to join a club during an interview. Has an obsession with culture worked for some companies? Yes. But don't be so obsessed that you come off as a goggle-eyed evangelist. The only difference between "culture" and "cult" is "ure." As in: "Ure kinda creeping me out with all this culture business."

Says Michael Williams, director of strategy and growth at Wine 'n Dine, a food and restaurant app based in New York City: "We don't want to craft a culture. We want it to be natural and authentic. And in order to reach that, it's important for us to have a diverse team with diverse interests. We don't want someone who's just going to fall into the same patterns that we're already in, see the same problems the way we see them."