lego case study interview

20 the LEGO Group Interview Questions and Answers

Prepare for the types of questions you are likely to be asked when interviewing for a position at the LEGO Group.

When it comes to interviews, the LEGO Group is all about creativity and fun. The company specializes in the development of children’s creativity through playing and learning, so it’s no surprise that they would want to see that same creativity and fun in their interviewees.

When interviewing with the LEGO Group, be prepared to answer questions that are specific to the company and its values. Questions may include topics such as why you want to work for the LEGO Group, what you know about the company’s history and philosophy, and how you would approach a situation where a child is having difficulty with a LEGO project.

With a little preparation, you can ace your interview and take one step closer to your dream job with the LEGO Group.

the LEGO Group Interview Process

The interview process at the LEGO Group is generally pretty long, taking anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. However, it is a very structured process, with each stage building on the last. The first stage is usually a phone screen, followed by a group interview, then an individual interview, and finally a case study. The difficulty of the interviews varies, but overall they are looking for candidates who are a good fit for the company culture and have the skills and experience necessary for the role.

• We are a family-owned company that is passionate about our employees and the happiness of children. Why do you think you would be a good fit for The LEGO Group?
• How would you describe your experience with LEGOS?
• Are you looking to grow in the area of management at The LEGO Group?
• What areas of customer service interest you most?
• Describe your experience working with children.
• Do you have any experience working in retail?
• Why do you want to work for The LEGO Group?
• Have you ever had to deal with an angry parent or child, how did you handle it?
• Tell me about a time when you were able to help someone achieve their goals.
• If you saw another employee not following company policy, what would you do?
• Tell us about a time when you worked well within a team.
• Have you ever had to take on more responsibility than was assigned to you? How did you handle this?
• What do you think sets The LEGO Group apart from other toy companies?
• What do you look forward to learning if hired by The LEGO Group?
• What is your favorite product that we offer at The LEGO Group?
• What types of products do you like to purchase here at The LEGO Group?
• Sometimes we get busy at work. How do you stay organized when things get hectic?
• We pride ourselves on being positive role models for children. How does this align with your personal values?
• What kind of environment helps you thrive as an employee?
• If a child came up to you asking questions about a product but you weren’t sure where to find the answer, what would you do?

1. We are a family-owned company that is passionate about our employees and the happiness of children. Why do you think you would be a good fit for The LEGO Group?

This question is an opportunity for you to show your enthusiasm and interest in working with the company. You can highlight any skills or experiences that make you a good fit for this role, such as:

Your ability to work well with others Your creativity Your problem-solving abilities Example: “I am passionate about children’s development and believe that The LEGO Group would be a great place to use my creative talents. I have always loved LEGOs and think that I could bring my passion for building things into this position.”

2. How would you describe your experience with LEGOS?

The interviewer may ask this question to learn more about your experience with the company and how you might fit in as a member of their team. If you have children, you can use examples from playing with LEGOS with them or if you don’t have children, you can describe other experiences you’ve had with LEGOS.

Example: “I grew up playing with LEGOS and I still enjoy building sets with my nephews when they come over for play dates. My favorite set is the Star Wars Death Star because it’s so intricate and fun to build.”

3. Are you looking to grow in the area of management at The LEGO Group?

The LEGO Group is a family-owned company that has been in business for over 80 years. The company’s management team consists of several members who have worked their way up through the ranks, so it’s likely they’re looking to hire individuals who are willing to do the same. When answering this question, be sure to emphasize your willingness to work hard and learn from more experienced managers.

Example: “I am definitely interested in growing within the organization as I feel my skills would be well-suited to working at The LEGO Group. I’ve always had an interest in children’s toys and games, and I think I could bring a lot of creativity and innovation to the company.”

4. What areas of customer service interest you most?

The LEGO Group is a company that focuses on the customer experience. The interviewer may ask this question to learn more about your interest in working with customers and how you would handle specific situations. Use examples from previous work experiences or discuss what you hope to achieve as a member of the team.

Example: “I have always enjoyed interacting with children, so I am excited to apply for this position at the LEGO Group. In my last job, I worked as a sales associate at a toy store where I helped parents find toys that were age-appropriate for their children. I also had the opportunity to interact with children who were shopping for themselves. It was rewarding to see them get excited about new toys.”

5. Describe your experience working with children.

The LEGO Group is a family-owned company that specializes in the development of children’s creativity through playing and learning. As such, they are looking for candidates who have experience working with children to ensure their employees can effectively communicate with kids. When answering this question, it can be helpful to highlight your communication skills and how you interact with children.

Example: “I’ve worked as a teacher at an elementary school for five years now, so I’m very comfortable interacting with children. In my role, I help students learn new concepts while also encouraging them to play and explore. I find that when I am able to make lessons fun and engaging, children are more likely to retain information.”

6. Do you have any experience working in retail?

The LEGO Group is a retail company, so they may ask this question to see if you have any experience working in retail. If you do, share your experiences and how it helped you develop as a professional. If you don’t have any experience, explain why not and what other retail-related jobs you’ve had.

Example: “I worked at a toy store for three years while I was in college. It was a small shop that sold toys, games and puzzles. My job was to help customers find the right products for their children. I learned how to interact with different types of people and developed my customer service skills.”

7. Why do you want to work for The LEGO Group?

This question is a great way for the interviewer to learn more about your interest in working for their company. It’s important to show that you have done research on the organization and understand what it does. You can also use this opportunity to highlight any specific skills or experiences that make you a good fit for the role.

Example: “I am passionate about children’s development, and I believe The LEGO Group is an excellent place to work because of its commitment to providing quality toys that help kids develop their creativity and problem-solving skills. As someone who has worked with children for many years, I know how important it is to find ways to inspire them to be creative and build confidence.”

8. Have you ever had to deal with an angry parent or child, how did you handle it?

The LEGO Group is a company that focuses on the development of children’s creativity and imagination. As such, they want to ensure their employees can handle conflict in a positive way. This question allows you to show your problem-solving skills and ability to remain calm under pressure.

Example: “I once had an upset parent call me because her child was upset after I told them they couldn’t take a piece of LEGOs home with them. The parent wanted to know why we wouldn’t let them take it, but I explained that if we allowed one child to take a piece, then all the other kids would want to do the same thing. We have rules for a reason, and I made sure to explain this to the parent so they understood our reasoning.”

9. Tell me about a time when you were able to help someone achieve their goals.

The interviewer may ask this question to learn more about your leadership skills and how you motivate others. When answering, it can be helpful to provide an example of a time when you helped someone achieve their goals or objectives.

Example: “When I was working as a manager at my previous job, one of my employees had been struggling with his work for quite some time. He would often miss deadlines and make mistakes that were easy to fix. After talking with him about the issue, he told me that he wanted to become a senior designer but felt like he wasn’t ready yet. We talked about what he needed to do to get there, and I gave him extra projects so he could practice designing things on his own.”

10. If you saw another employee not following company policy, what would you do?

The interviewer may ask this question to learn more about your ability to follow rules and regulations. This can be an important skill for employees at the LEGO Group because they must adhere to company policies, procedures and standards when working on projects or interacting with customers. In your answer, try to show that you understand the importance of following these guidelines and would take action if you saw another employee not doing so.

Example: “I believe it’s important to always follow company policy. If I saw a fellow employee breaking a rule, I would first approach them privately to discuss my concerns. If they continued to break the policy after our conversation, I would report the issue to my supervisor.”

11. Tell us about a time when you worked well within a team.

The LEGO Group is a family-owned company that values teamwork and collaboration. They want to know how you can contribute to their team of professionals who are passionate about developing children’s creativity through playing and learning with the LEGO brand.

Example: “I have always been passionate about working in an environment where I can collaborate with others to solve problems and find creative solutions. In my last role, I was part of a marketing team that worked together to develop a new campaign for our client. We had a tight deadline, but we were able to work well as a team to create a successful campaign.”

12. Have you ever had to take on more responsibility than was assigned to you? How did you handle this?

The interviewer may ask this question to learn more about your leadership skills and how you handle challenges. When answering, it can be helpful to mention a specific time when you took on additional responsibilities or increased your workload without being asked to do so.

Example: “When I was working as an assistant manager at my previous job, the store manager had to take some time off due to illness. The company didn’t want to hire someone new for that position while the store manager was out, so they asked me to fill in until she returned. It was challenging taking on her duties while also managing my own, but I learned a lot from the experience.”

13. What do you think sets The LEGO Group apart from other toy companies?

The LEGO Group is a unique company that offers children the opportunity to develop their creativity through play. The interviewer may ask this question to see if you understand what makes The LEGO Group different from other toy companies and how your skills can benefit them. In your answer, try to identify specific aspects of the company that make it unique and explain why these are important.

Example: “I think one thing that sets The LEGO Group apart from other toy companies is its commitment to developing toys that encourage children’s imagination and creativity. I believe that playing with LEGOs helps children learn problem-solving skills and encourages them to be more creative in their thinking. As an early childhood education specialist, I am passionate about helping children develop these skills at a young age.”

14. What do you look forward to learning if hired by The LEGO Group?

The interviewer may ask this question to gauge your interest in the company and its products. Use your answer to show that you are passionate about working for The LEGO Group, but also that you’re excited to learn more about the industry as a whole.

Example: “I am very interested in learning how The LEGO Group develops new toys and games for children. I have always been fascinated by the process of creating something from scratch, so I would love to see what goes into making such an amazing product.”

15. What is your favorite product that we offer at The LEGO Group?

This question is a great way to see if you have experience with our products and how much you know about the company. When answering this question, it can be helpful to mention a specific product that you like and why you enjoy it.

Example: “My favorite LEGO set would have to be The Death Star from A New Hope. I love the detail of the model and all of the little extras that come with it. It’s also fun to build because there are so many different ways to put it together.”

16. What types of products do you like to purchase here at The LEGO Group?

This question is a great way to show your knowledge of the company and its products. It also shows that you are familiar with the brand, which can be important for any job in sales or marketing. When answering this question, it’s best to focus on the types of toys you have purchased from The LEGO Group in the past.

Example: “I love buying LEGOs because they’re so versatile. I’ve built everything from castles to spaceships out of them. They’re also really durable, so my creations last a long time. My favorite sets are Star Wars ones, but I also like the Ninjago ones.”

17. Sometimes we get busy at work. How do you stay organized when things get hectic?

The interviewer may ask this question to learn more about your organizational skills and how you stay on top of your work. Use examples from past experiences where you’ve had to manage multiple projects or tasks at once, prioritize important deadlines and keep track of your progress.

Example: “I find that using a calendar is the best way for me to stay organized when I have many things going on at once. At my last job, I was responsible for managing several social media accounts while also creating content for them. To stay on top of everything, I used an online calendar to schedule out all of my posts and create weekly goals for myself. This helped me stay focused and meet all of my deadlines.”

18. We pride ourselves on being positive role models for children. How does this align with your personal values?

The LEGO Group wants to hire people who are positive role models for children. They want employees who can show their passion for the company and its products, as well as how they can positively influence children through their actions.

Example: “I believe that it is important to be a positive role model for children. I am passionate about working in an environment where we encourage creativity and playfulness. I also feel strongly about encouraging STEM education at a young age. As someone who has always been interested in engineering, I would love to work with The LEGO Group because of the educational opportunities you provide.”

19. What kind of environment helps you thrive as an employee?

The interviewer may ask this question to learn more about your personality and how you fit into a team. Your answer should include information about the type of environment that makes you feel comfortable, such as an open office space or a collaborative work group.

Example: “I thrive in an environment where I can collaborate with others on projects and ideas. In my last role, I worked in a large open office space with several other employees who were all working on different aspects of the same project. We would often bounce ideas off each other and help one another when we needed it.”

20. If a child came up to you asking questions about a product but you weren’t sure where to find the answer, what would you do?

The interviewer may ask this question to see how you would handle a challenging situation. In your answer, demonstrate that you are willing to do what it takes to find the information and help the child.

Example: “If I wasn’t sure about an answer, I would first try to find the answer myself by looking through our database or asking my colleagues for assistance. If I still couldn’t find the answer after searching, I would call customer service to get in touch with someone who could provide me with the answers.”

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HBS Cases: LEGO

Although it isn't part of the admissions criteria, experience playing with LEGOs can come in handy at Harvard Business School.

When Stefan H. Thomke teaches his new case about the iconic toy company, he gives students eight-studded LEGO building bricks to figure out how many different ways they can be combined. Thomke's experience goes back a long way—as a kid growing up in Germany he participated in a LEGO competition. As an adult, though, his interests lie more in the business behind the bricks. "When you've written many cases you have a gut feeling that one like this could be really great," he says.

Thomke, the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration, wrote the case with Harvard Business School's Jan W. Rivkin, the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration, and Daniela Beyersdorfer, associate director of the HBS Europe Research Center.

LEGO explores how the company-one of the most profitable toymakers in the world-grew to global dominance from humble beginnings; the mistakes that led it near bankruptcy; and why one turnaround attempt failed while a second succeeded. LEGO executives were unusually supportive about the case-writing process, Thomke says. "We had access to everybody; they wanted the story to be told truthfully, with all the good and the bad."

Building At The Start

Part of that access included a visit to a wood craftsman's workshop in the small town of Billund, Denmark, where LEGO began, in 1916. Carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen eventually shifted the business from making houses and furniture to crafting wooden toys. He based the name of his new venture on the Danish words for "play well" (and, as it turned out, the Latin words for "to assemble"). His motto "Only the best is good enough" would later be carved into a wooden plaque and hung in the workshop. These themes of good play and quality products were both bedrocks and touchstones for future generations of LEGO toy makers.

Godtfred Kirk Kristiansen represented the second generation, working alongside his father at age 12. The LEGO brick played with by kids and adults around the globe came into being during Godtfred's tenure. He considered it a unique, sturdy, simple product—a system—that offered endless opportunities for creative fun, and drew up a list of product characteristics including "long hours of play" and "quality in every detail" that was distributed to everyone in the company.

Like his father, Godtfred paid careful attention to every aspect of the business, applying, for example, his knowledge of material science and production technology to the brick-manufacturing process. It's because of these precise specifications that bricks made under his watch are interchangeable with those available today. Godtfred's cautious nature extended all the way to the profit margins: he championed slow, steady growth. Because of this, it could take years for a new product to go to market. Green bricks, for instance, appeared in play sets only after a decadelong decision-making process-and the idea to include them came from Godtfred's son (and third-generation toymaker), Kjeld.

The snail's pace served the company well, as did the grandson of its founder. Under Kjeld's management, product demand was so high at times that executives actually found themselves discussing ways to slow sales.

A Shock To The System

That all changed in the early 1990s as seismic shifts pounded the toy market. Big Box toy discounters trampled mom-and-pops and lowered prices dramatically. Meanwhile, birth rates declined, children had less time to play and not much interest in toys that didn't offer instant gratification. "These changes did not play well to our strengths," observed current CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp in the case.

Serious jolts were also taking place in the LEGO Group. Out of work for a year following a serious illness in 1993, Kjeld appointed a five-person management team to help him run the company when he returned. The group focused mainly on driving growth. When a benchmarking study revealed LEGO's global name recognition was on par with industry giants like Disney, the team started churning out new products and ideas to leverage the brand's untapped value. A line of LEGO-branded children's wear was created and a division of the LEGO Group was charged with pitching book, movie, and TV ideas. LEGO building sets became increasingly complex with more unique components.

While the number of LEGO-branded items grew, sales did not, and in 1998 the company suffered its first financial loss. "Their top-line growth was slowing down but their cost was accelerating, so they were starting to lose some significant money," says Thomke.

Danish turnaround expert Poul Plougmann was hired to reassemble LEGO and staunch the red ink. "He comes in and … does things by the book," says Thomke. "He lays people off, he streamlines some things, he globalizes." And yet the financial picture grew worse. "He's basically going by the turnaround book, but it doesn't work."

One continuing problem: the company's growing complexity was choking it. Adding more bricks made products harder to assemble, forecasts harder to determine, and inventory harder to manage. Depending on the kit, there was either too much inventory, or no inventory at all, and restocking could take months.

"You had this multiplier effect of added complexity that went through the entire supply chain," Thomke says.

The LEGO Group had also gotten too far away from the core values it had been building on for the better part of a century. The toymaker found itself needing to turn around its turnaround.

Outside The Family

Enter Jørgen Knudstorp. He was just 35 years old when Kjeld promoted him from director of strategic development to CEO in 2004. (Kjeld retired that same year.)

Like Plougmann, he had no family ties to the company. Unlike Plougmann, his turnaround attempt succeeded. Knudstorp's slow-it-down approach of careful cash management, focusing on core products, and reducing product complexity certainly contributed to that success. It would also take re-engaging with customers, many of whom passed a love of LEGOs to their children while still connecting with the toys themselves. "One of the insights Jørgen had when he became CEO was that he needed to reconnect with the community [of loyal LEGO fans], one of the most powerful assets the company had," says Thomke. "It was a huge part of the comeback."

Knudstorp worked hard to define the core business of the company. "How you work with, and experiment outside of, the core of your business is part of that balance," explains Thomke.

Knudstorp recognized that innovation was part of that core, but he'd also seen the result of unconstrained creativity, so new product design began to be informed by market research, user feedback, and how well the toys matched the vision of quality creative play laid out by its founding fathers. Putting parameters on how people innovate had the paradoxical effect of making them better at it.

Reining in the creative process was part of a larger push by Knudstorp to reduce overall complexity within the organization. On the supply chain side, he did away with many of the unique brick components added during Plougmann's tenure, and eventually decided to bring brick manufacturing back in-house to ensure quality control.

Finally, Knudstorp made big changes to the management team, firing five of seven manufacturing executives and appointing a new leader for the team. A psychoanalyst was brought in to teach the management team how to identify decision-making made by logic versus emotion.

Sustainable And Balanced

It turns out that LEGOs promote lifelong learning. While the bricks themselves teach children the fundamentals of construction and creativity, the company's almost century-old history of management change has important lessons for businesspeople. "Managing sustainable growth is also about managing a balanced business system," says Thomke. "Complexity is something you need to watch very closely."

Controlling complexity, clarifying the core of its business, and engaging the larger community helped save the LEGO Group. Although he was not a Kristiansen by birth, Knudstorp's management style and business ideals closely mirrored those of its founding fathers. Only the best was, and is, good enough.

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Brick by Brick: A Case Study on LEGO’s Culture of Innovation

by Carla Johnson

December 6, 2022

How does a company swing from scrapping together toys from actual scraps in the Great Depression to becoming a household name to nearly filing for bankruptcy to being one of history’s greatest innovation superstars?

By being really good at building, and rebuilding, one brick at a time.

I’m talking, of course, about LEGO . 

LEGO wasn’t always an innovation success story. Like all large companies, they’ve gone through more than a few ups and downs. But somehow they always managed to turn things around.

Let’s take a look at how they consistently innovated their way into the hearts of kids and adults alike.

How LEGO built itself from nothing

LEGO bricks actually began as scraps of wood in 1932 by Danish woodworker Ole Kirk Kristiansen. Before making toys, he made practical objects like ladders, ironing boards, and farm equipment. The Great Depression made work scarce, so he switched to making toys since scraps were easier to come by than large bits of lumber. But even resourcefulness and innovation didn’t immediately save him. People considered toys a luxury in the Depression, and many of the folks in town couldn’t afford them. Ole often traded toys for food just to survive. 

Fast forward to the 1940s and when the Nazis occupied Denmark. Not only was lumber crazy expensive, but Ole’s workshop also caught fire, and he lost his entire inventory and blueprints.

He managed to hold on to the business until the early 1950s when he met his next roadblock. World War II had made lumber nearly impossible for Ole to get his hands on. Instead, he used a new material: plastic. This is when he developed the patented interlocking system that made the LEGO bricks famously stackable.

LEGOs became wildly successful shortly after.

Success meets a brick wall

By the 1990s, LEGO’s popularity took a hit. The digital era began eeking its way into kids’ games and quickly caught the eyes of the brand’s curious customers. Nintendo was the sexy new stud on the block. (Yes, I’m absolutely going to fit in as many puns as I can.) Small toy shops closed their doors thanks to heavy competition from big box stores like Toys ‘R Us.

LEGO tried to keep up with the new trends in toymaking, even getting into the video game business to keep up with Nintendo. But it quickly became a case of trying too many things, getting away from its core business, and stretching itself too thin.

Teetering on the edge, LEGO barely avoided bankruptcy in the early 2000s. But a few emergency loans kept it afloat long enough to simplify its business and get back to its roots. By chasing every trend in the world of toys, LEGO had lost sight of what they were good at. They recentered their business on their iconic building sets, launching franchise sets including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones , and many other cult favorites.

That one move saved the company.

More renovations

The success of LEGO franchise sets gave the company enough liquidity to experiment again. But this time, they tried something they hadn’t done in years: openly accepting feedback from their fans. The relationship between customers and small toy shop owners used to be their main avenue for customer feedback. But thanks to competition from big box stores, small toy shops were closing and that invaluable feedback was lost. Until 1998.

In 1998, LEGO launched the Mindstorms robotics kits, a combination of hardware and software that let fans build robots using the iconic LEGO bricks. Just hours after the launch, thousands of hackers hijacked the software to make unauthorized modifications that gave new functions to the robots.

LEGO had a choice: prosecute the hackers… or embrace them.

LEGO recognized that they could collaborate with fans for feedback, and that would turn out to be invaluable.

They took a gamble and it paid off. Big time.

Using an open innovation strategy, LEGO re-launched the Mindstorms NXT series in 2006 which went on to become one of their biggest successes of all time. Why? They co-created with their customers.

LEGO used the feedback ecosystem they developed around the Mindstorms products as a model to create their now-famous culture of innovation. They started the LEGO Ambassador Program, which allowed fans to engage with the company around its kits. This continuous feedback loop gave LEGO tons of new ideas and partnerships, while making fans key decision-makers in the process.

Around the same time, LEGO started the crowdsourcing platform LEGO Ideas . The platform encourages fans to submit their ideas, and fellow fans can vote on which products they’d like to see put into production. Once an idea hits 10,000 votes, it moves on to a LEGO review board. If selected, the original creator receives 1% of the product’s revenue.

Building on success

Using feedback from their fans, LEGO consistently churns out great idea after great idea. Go to their website and, besides ordering products, you can build things, share them with friends, and watch videos. Five times a year they publish a magazine that kids go crazy over. They produced Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary – a documentary for adult fans of LEGO bricks. They’ve released Hollywood feature films that grossed hundreds of millions of dollars. Their YouTube channel has millions of subscribers. They have eight amuse ment parks . There’s even a game you can download from the app store.

All from a company that sells little rectangular pieces of plastic.

LEGO’s 4 building blocks of success

Not every company has the massive innovation budget of LEGO, or the decades of experience as an industry giant, or the rabid (and vocal) fan base. So what are some lessons any company can learn from LEGO’s giant success?

1) Respect why your customers fell in love with you in the first place

LEGO became famous for its iconic bricks. But over the years, chasing too many trends drove them away from their core business model. While sometimes shifting the entire company makes sense – especially when technology deems old product lines extinct – in LEGO’s case, it was unnecessary. It wasn’t until they recommitted to their building sets in the early 2000s that LEGO was able to become an innovation legend.

2) Listen to your customers, including your biggest critics

From bringing hackers on board in the 90s to LEGO Ambassadors to crowdsourcing ideas, LEGO became a model for open innovation. The constant feedback loop with their fans tuned LEGO into exactly what their customers wanted and sparked endless ideas. It doesn’t have to be complicated. If you listen to your customers, they’ll tell you what they want to buy.

3) Develop complementary offerings instead of reinventing the wheel

LEGO only really started becoming the innovation darling we know today once they started listening to their customers. And what did their fans want? More ways to enjoy LEGOs! From movies to theme parks, LEGO created tons of new ways to enjoy the brand that didn’t compete with their core products. And that last part is key. Not only are you competing with your rivals, but your company might also just be competing with itself.

4) Create a culture of innovation

Google’s corporate campus has nothing on LEGO’s. Little toy bricks are everywhere . LEGO encourages all its employees to play regularly and submit ideas. So not only do they source ideas from their fans, but from everyone at the company, as well. From Frank in Accounting to Nadia in HR, everyone is invited to make the company better.

Want to know more about how to create a culture of innovation like LEGO? Check out:

The Museum of Play: The Connection Between Play and Innovation

How to Create a Culture of Innovation

Why Innovation is Your Competitive Advantage

How to Innovate

Photo credit: Jason Leung via Unsplash

About Carla

Carla Johnson helps leaders who are often paralyzed by traditional thinking. They suffer from slow growth, an eroding competitive advantage, low employee engagement, and depleted investor confidence. Their teams lack purpose and progress and constantly battle a resistance to change and new ideas.

As the world’s leading innovation architect, Carla’s spent 20 years helping leaders shatter limits and discover undiscovered possibilities. Through years of research, she’s developed a simple, scalable 5-step process that teaches people how to consistently produce inspired ideas that lead to uncommon outcomes.

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How do you select the right people for YOUR team?

That was the question I needed answered last year when I was asked by my Project Manager, Kris Declerck , @Digipolis Ghent to recruit new .NET developers. We needed for our Scrum team of our new project Sirius new quality developers. My part of the recruitment was to test their Scrum knowledge and experience, as Scrum has become more and more essential in our way of software development.

I was all excited! But how to go about it?

I wanted to do it differently, not the standard boring way like a lot of companies do. Also, everyone can be well prepared thanks to this little tech invention called the Web. So, how to do a thing that everyone knows but do it in a different way with the same or even better results?

Who am I? I am Marc, Agile consultant working for Equalminds . I am currently Scrum Master at our client @Digipolis Ghent for 3 projects and Scrum coach for 2 other projects for the same client.

During my thinking process I remembered my one day of Lego® Serious Play workshop from 2 years ago with Luc Segers , founder of Equalminds and the best boss I’ve ever had. We both were very impressed by the power of these little colorful building blocks. Could I use this for my case? Isn’t Lego® too childish? Perhaps for some or even for many but that teaches me one thing: the openness to new things of someone. And would I like someone who isn’t open minded in my team?

So, in part 1 of this blog I will guide you through the working method that I’ve developed.

This method will get the candidates out of their comfort zone, as they can’t prepare for it. And the best of all…they don’t expect it. Thus, allowing me to assess the person quite well in a limited time but quite stressful for them, of course. It will allow me to discover behaviors as:

• How the candidate handles and resolves complex and unclear issues
• Their creativity
• Their openness
• Their personality
• Their learning potential
• Their ability to self-reflect
• Their motivation
• How they handle stress
• Their communication skills
• Their customer focus

Or as Plato once said “You can discover more about a person in an hour play then in a year of conversation”

So, how does my method work? You need a hands-on exercise with:

• 3 Sprints (time box)
• 3 Reviews (demo)
• 3 Retrospectives (evaluation & self-reflection moments)

The exercise

The candidate needs to build in 3 sprints 3 items, e.g.

The items can vary. Each item receives business value (= priority) and complexity (= story points) to build it. The business value is to test the customer mindedness of the candidate.

The Sprints

These items must be built in 3 iterations (= sprints) of 3 minutes each, in total 9 minutes. When the candidate is ready his/her 3 minutes (= first sprint) start and it’s time for you to observe how the candidate handles the situation and the exercise. You count down out loud to test the stress level of the candidate.

After 3 minutes the candidate shows what he/she has built (= demo). You check together if he/she has met your requirements; if the candidate asked for them, of course. Was he/she able to finish the item to build?

During the demo you act as the (un) satisfied customer depending on what you’d like to find out of the candidate. Watch how he/she reacts to your feedback, comments and critique.

Time for self-reflection (the retrospective) and learning

After the demo you ask how he/she experienced this sprint (= evaluation and self-reflection). This allows you to detect whether the person can (easily) learn from his/her experience from the first sprint and will use his/her experience in the second and third sprint.

Don’t let the 3×3 minutes mislead you. Depending on the candidate the Lego® exercise does take about 45 minutes to an hour when done thoroughly, and depending on the interactivity with the candidate.

To keep the element of surprise, when working with preferred recruiters for instance or if my method would get word, there are many variations possible:

• Let the candidate work together with existing team members (team player);
• Other items in the exercise that we successfully introduced were e.g. an airplane, a motorcycle, a trailer, a track & field, a locker room (creativity)
• Change the business value and the story points (customer focus & logic)
• Play good cop & bad cop (confrontation)

Do you want to know more about my findings with my recruiting method, about the evaluations of some candidates? Would you like to know more about the reactions of some candidates? How THEY experienced the power of Lego®? Their experiences are more valuable to me because they speak for themselves as the outcome of my little personality assessment.

Would you like to find out how effective it is for our client Digipolis Ghent and for Equalminds after doing 86 job interviews for them? Then read part 2 of my blog coming soon: job interviews with Lego® – the evaluation.

In the meantime here is a link to another blog of Federik Vannieuwenhuyse describing his experience about my recruiting method (in Dutch):  Recruitment met Lego blokjes

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