Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Susan Docherty who leads the United States sales, service and marketing team at General Motors. She says she asks job candidates for three things they would do if they were in her position. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

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How do you hire?

I like building teams with people who come from very different backgrounds and have very different experiences. I don’t just mean diverse teams, in terms of men and women or people of different color or origin. I like people who have worked in different places in the world than I have because they bring a lot more context to the discussion. That’s something that I value a tremendous amount.

I make sure that when I’m looking at people for my team, it’s not just what’s on their résumé — their strengths or weaknesses or what they’ve accomplished — but it’s the way they think. I can learn twice as much, twice as quickly, if I’ve got people who think differently than I do around the table.

Can you talk more about how you hire?

I’m always in hiring mode. Always. When someone comes in for an interview, and they’re polished, and they’re practiced, and they’ve honed their résumé — everybody can give a great first impression. But what’s most important is seeing how people handle interactions on a day-to-day basis, when you’ve got days that are good, bad and ugly. It’s about how you handle the day-to-day interactions with your peers. It’s about how you treat the people on your team.

I have these little cardboard cards. And if I have an open position, and I’m considering a certain person, I grab one of these cards, and I write 1 through 10 on it. And I always try to get input about that person from other people. I don’t tell people necessarily, “Hey, I’m thinking about hiring so-and-so. What do you think about them?”

I might say, “Give me two great things that you like about this person, and two areas where you think they have a developmental opportunity.” And when you ask people like that, off the cuff, when you’re in an elevator or waiting for a meeting to start, you get some really candid feedback. So I get input from 10 different people — from the person’s supervisor to people who are on their team, and also from someone completely outside of the organization, like an ad agency or a supplier.

What feedback have you heard about yourself through the years?

I will tell you that 9 times out of 10, people say that I’m impatient. However, I think in the environment that we’re in right now, coming out of bankruptcy, that has become a strength.

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To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.