“In 1921, tired of hiring college graduates that didn’t know as much as he did, Thomas Edison made up a giant trivia questionnaire to administer to inbound appl

“In 1921, tired of hiring college graduates that didn’t know as much as he did, Thomas Edison made up a giant trivia questionnaire to administer to inbound applicants. According to Mental Floss, questions included “Who invented logarithms?” and “Why is cast iron called Pig Iron?” ... “To summarize, almost 100 years ago, an aging, eccentric, and incredibly brilliant inventor decided one day that he didn’t like hiring kids that weren’t his equals in knowledge. He devised a scheme off the cuff to indulge his preference and we’re still doing that exact thing about a century later.” Excerpt From Developer Hegemony Erik Dietrich To answe your question, the “soft skills” questions are no different then riddles. They are an arbitrary set of questions that instead of being defined by technical folks are instead created by HR people. It’s an arbitrary barrier to entry that allows HR to rank candidates.