Sublime

We both find during interviews that “downtime-revealed preferences” are more interesting than “stories about your prior jobs.” So for instance, “What subreddits or blogs do you read?” usually is better than “What did you do at your previous job?” We very much like the title of the research paper by Mohammed Khwaja and Aleksandar Matic, “Personality

extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness.

specially designed text-analysis software such as that developed by Pennebaker (and available on his Web site).

These days, our very favorite interview question is this one: “What are the open tabs on your browser right now?”

He has a kind, round face and the relaxed, easygoing manner of someone who’s spent most of his life in California.

Rarely is someone able to describe his or her identity on demand. It needs to be drawn out.

This general snooping strategy—contrasting the easy-to-control items (which tend to be identity claims and feeling regulators) with things that are difficult to control (which tend to be behavioral residue)—captures many of the specific examples we have examined so far, such as comparing front and back yards, or offices and bedrooms, or books on th