I have a sneaking suspicion that hiring is like stockpicking: after an initial filter, monkeys with darts would do just as well. The problem is: if the intervi

I have a sneaking suspicion that hiring is like stockpicking: after an initial filter, monkeys with darts would do just as well. The problem is: if the interviewers are "constantly learning," (and they are, just ask them), then they are consistently making mistakes that the future, more learn-ed version of themselves wouldn't make. To take an example from the article: interviewers are to ask candidates about some time that they used data to make a decision. What if a candidate responds with a story in which they realized the data were pointing the way to a local optimum that the candidate cleverly avoided? To you, smart HN reader, you are perhaps impressed, and tempted to slap the candidate on the back and rejoice in your shared membership in the club of those who've discovered ambiguity ("Complexity, such a bitch, right?"); but if the interviewer but dimly remembers calculus but is proud of themselves for using a sentence with the word "data" in it, then the candidate's response will come off not as an indication of the ability to "ask the right questions," but a sign of non-cooperativeness, "irrational refusal to let decisions be driven by the data," and perhaps intellectual arrogance. For interviewers, I have no idea what to tell them. For candidates, I can only say: Lie, and then follow through. If they are looking for "grit" but you had a privileged upbringing, make something up and commit to yourself to be grit-ful[0], rather than saying what's in your head, which is "I haven't had much hardship but I get the importance of resilience." If they ask for your greatest weakness[1], say anything but your greatest weakness; instead talk about the difficulty of coping with other peoples' weaknesses ("I don't deal with my father's alcoholism as well as I ought," or "I get impatient with lazy people."). [0]This is basically what the sales people in your org do, which is why you get those requests. [1] This is a dishonest question, because there are wrong answers. The only acceptable answers are weaknesses that the interviewer shares; but by making that the only right answer the interviewer is implying that they have the "best" weakness and therefore have no "real" weaknesses. If they don't introspect honestly, why the hell should you? Or, more charitably, which is a better approximation of reality, that you are both about equal on your paths to enlightenment, or that you are an imbecile? Is truth best served by communicating the former through omission, or the latter through facts?