Imagine you had 11 candidates like he described, and you interviewed them in random orders. For ease, we will describe them by number, which will also equate t

Imagine you had 11 candidates like he described, and you interviewed them in random orders. For ease, we will describe them by number, which will also equate to their "goodness" by arbitrary criteria (known to the interviewer only). One of the worst possible cases would be that you interview them like: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 In this case, you would see them decreasing in "goodness" without ever increasing. You would get to 11 and be stuck with the crappiest whatever possible. In the average version though, you might get something like: 7 3 4 6 5 8 11 1 10 9 2 Using their strategy, you would check the first 4 candidates (7 3 4 6) and then you would stop when you hit better than max(7 3 4 6) = (3), which in this case would equate to finding (1) at the 8th position. You are correct that if the best is in the first block it screws everything up. In the specific version you mention, a possible arrangement that triggers could be: 3 9 8 1 5 10 2 6 4 7 11 You would interview the first set with a best of (1). All the rest would then not compare, and you would get (11).