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Job Interview 2.0: With those stupid Riddles
- byrneseyeview 18y agoIt may just be a hacker thing, but isn't everyone taking these interviews way too literally? They don't want someone who will always go for baroque when presented with a problem; they want someone who is at least capable of finding clever solutions. It's a good proxy for IQ, which they can no longer legally test, but which correlates very strongly with job performance in a variety of tasks.
- bdfh42 18y agoTrue - but too many of these problem tasks one hears about are so stupid that it casts doubt on the technique. I would much rather be asked to tackle a real world problem (in code or as a spoken exercise) Indeed, being asked to solve silly riddles would persuade me to drop a job application. I would class such things alongside graphology and lie detector tests as strong counter indicators.
- Protophore 18y agoI've never been asked something like this in an interview. How much time do they give you to answer something like this?
- byrneseyeview 18y agoThey may want to standardize grading. They may want to see how broadly you can apply information (e.g. if I were asking someone a finance question, I would not ask them to talk about stock options -- I'd ask them to talk about trading water rights, or valuing nonsmoking sections in a restaurant).
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]