- If someone gives you specs and you notice that something is off, what do you do?
- If you have to solve a problem you haven't solved before, how do you approach it?
- What's your take on accessibility on the web?
- What's your process like for deciding that you're at the point in your career where you can mentor others?
- What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked?
- You're just about to finish a feature and have a great idea for improving it. What do you do?
For all of these things, people will likely give different answers but those answers will tell me a lot about whether or not they would end up being really useful for the kinds of teams I build.
I really like the question about specs, and I'll definitely use that in the future when I'm on the interviewer side of the hiring desk. A useful follow up to that would be, "If I gave you a list of features, how would you go about estimating how long it would take to build them all out?" There is no perfect answer to that (as we know from the steady drumbeat of stories decrying the state of software estimation) but hearing how someone would go about solving a problem under conditions of uncertainty would tell give you a lot more useful information, in my opinion, than "What kind of relationship do you want to have with your co-workers?"
I have an itch to answer these for some unknown reason.
- What's your mechanism for bias self-check?
Debate. I like debating, I have to admit. It's a great way to sharpen one's logic. But, one has to careful to not get labeled as "argumentative".
- If someone gives you specs and you notice that something is off, what do you do?
I always have suggestions or questions on any non-trivial spec. I list them up and email them out to the project manager. I do try to be polite in my criticism, though. Example: "I'm concerned that X may confuse users. Here's an alternative to consider."
- If you have to solve a problem you haven't solved before, how do you approach it?
I try to ponder such longer than normal rather than go with the first approach that pops into my head. I may work on something else while the idea dances around in the back of my head. Sometimes I dream up solutions at night. It sounds cliche, but it's true.
- What's your take on accessibility on the web?
Managers and users often like fancy UI's that may run into accessibility problems. It's a tricky thing to balance. Eye-candy does "sell" a UI, and accessibility often hampers that. Sometimes I try to find ways to spruce up a UI that don't harm accessibility, such as improving logos or including interesting "side" graphics that don't interfere with the primary function.
- What's your process like for deciding that you're at the point in your career where you can mentor others?
If I feel I can help somebody without offending them, I will often just jump in and do task-specific mentoring. But I wouldn't want to do such full time.
- What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked?
I will defend them if their ideas or work have merit. If not, there's probably a reason they create team friction, and to be frank, they probably should change careers into something that's a better fit for them. Often times such people are not "bad", rather just in the wrong field.
- You're just about to finish a feature and have a great idea for improving it. What do you do?
I'll check with my supervisor. If I'm enthusiastic about the better variation, he or she will typically allow me to go with the better one once they know me. If time is tight, it may have to wait until the next version. I will work extra hours if I feel it's a compelling feature.
I don't like these questions at all. My initial reaction to these is: Why do you insist the candidate reads your mind? Some of the questions can be useful if rephrased to not require mind-reading the best range of answers.
The purpose of the interview for the interviewer: deciding between "no, don't hire this person", "maybe, we'll decide later with more data or after comparing with another person", and "yes, hire".
The purpose of the interview for the interviewee: deciding "yes/no, I want to continue with this company" and conditionally if yes trying their best to get the interviewer into the "yes, hire" state.
I'm only going to pick on one of these questions, but they all have the same problem in that they're not (to me) very effective means at fulfilling the purpose since they'll select for candidates most capable of reading your mind, not actually really useful candidates. When you ask "what's your take on accessibility on the web?", the candidate is thinking many things at once. Here are some: 1) do I have a take and what is it? 2) what's the answer the interviewer wants to hear? 3) if my answer is wrong does that make it impossible to get into the "no, don't hire" state? 4) will I know once I answer?
Maybe you want a take that says accessibility is important despite the added costs, because humanism or whatever. If they say accessibility isn't important, because the costs don't justify it, you put them in the "no" bucket. Or perhaps it's vice versa, or you analyze the issue through some other framework. Maybe you really just want to see if they can converse about it at all, and will devil's-advocate the opposite of what they say, and only put them in the "no" bucket if they can't converse or start screaming at you.
In any case, I don't think you're being fair to the candidate and you're likely wasting time. If you just want to test ability to converse, and don't actually care what they personally believe, state that in the question and don't ask for their actual belief: "I'd like to have a sort of philosophical discussion with you about accessibility on the web. Let's imagine I ask you ... and you feel ..." If you actually have a specific range of answers in mind that can put someone in the "no" bucket, put that information in the job description requirements. "Expected to design with accessibility in mind." fits the first of my maybes, "Expected to move fast and not spend time on non-MVP work like accessibility." fits the vice-versa. Presto, no mind games, no wasted time for everyone because it wasn't clear until you asked your question that you hold opposite views and thus this is a "no". Maybe you're worried about liars, which you have to be anyway since plenty of people apply to coding positions without being able to code, so you might ask a more specific question (like we do by asking them to code something) around accessibility that makes clear what conclusion you expect (it matches the job description) and that you're looking for some sort of reasoning for why that conclusion is such in their mind.
Maybe since you're mentioning "end up being really useful" (as opposed to just useful) you don't weigh answers to these questions as hard "yes" or "no" filters, but just "maybes" that you can subjectively reflect upon later (e.g. by adding up a bunch of "maybes" you've recast to point-weighted soft yes/nos that can cancel each other). Fine, you can still put "Bonus:" in the job description, rather than "Required:", so that candidates know ahead of time that if they can only get to the "maybe" state the presence/absence of those certain "Bonus" attributes will influence their chances of moving from "maybe" to "yes". If they're already uncertain about "yes", and see a lack of "bonus" attributes on top of that, they're likely to not bother, again saving everyone's time.
It's fine to distinguish between "really useful" and "useful". Questions that can distinguish between degrees of "maybe" between candidates aren't bad, but they should be back-loaded as much as possible, and only used when the front-loaded yes/no questions have been asked and you're still in a state of uncertainty about which candidate would really be better, lamenting that you only have the budget for one of them. How many of those do you get?
How can you even answer any of these questions except with fluff and bullshit if you want to be hired? Google is supposed to be a data-driven company, but it's impossible to extract any information out of bullshit, bullshit by definition is orthogonal to observable reality, it is neither truth, nor falsehood, it's pure empty words.
I’m interviewing 20+ candidates a month, and I have to say: these questions are really good to understand a person. It’s almost impossible to answer questions like 3 and 4 with fluff or BS, because they are asking for actual cases. This case-based interview technique allows you to go deep into the way people act, how they argue, how they try to influence people, how they view themself.
It’s important to understand that these questions are just the starting point of a conversation to understand how a person thinks and acts. It’s impossible to make things up with a good recruiter because there’s no way you know beforehand how deep and where he will go with his follow-up questions
>How can you even answer any of these questions except with fluff and bullshit...
That's so funny, I read these question's and though I could consolidate them into a single question:
"How well can you bullshit and talk about things entirely immaterial to work?"
Seems a lot of people are chiming in to say how great question #3 is (how do/did you solve a problem at work)...I've gotten this in interviews and told them the Mad Men/Don Draper story of needing a new ad for my client "Lucky Strike" because the attorney General was going to prohibit our existing ads, complete with the pitch how I convinced the client its the greatest opportunity in marketing, asked them how they make their product....stopped them in their tracks, said that's it: "Its Toasted". Interviewers seem to love that story, and if they have seen Mad Men they seem to love it even more. Other times I told them about selling Mangos when I was a child...they love that one too, nothing more bullshitters love than other bullshitters.
These are generally interview wildcards. It can be used against you regardless of how you answer (assuming you didn't show an obvious red flag like call your former manager a fuckhead) or used for your benefit if someone needs a bit more leverage to get you on the team.
My take is that you need to project the image of a professional, match your resume experience, don't be combative and basically show that you can be a valuable drone. Even the fact that you can bullshit this with a straight face and not go candid on the interviewer is a positive data point, as that's basically 80% of working in a corporation. But again, the hiring manager can cherry pick positives/negatives based on what he actually wants to do.
Keep in mind that this is a marketing blog post for a fairly simple hiring platform.
The target audience for this is small to medium businesses, not corporations or competitive startups, who would be potential customers. It's more of a starting place for people who do not think about this much.
My guess is that HN is not the target audience for this blog post, so take what the simplicity of what is said with a huge grain of salt.
> How can you even answer any of these questions except with fluff and bullshit if you want to be hired? Google is supposed to be a data-driven company, but it's impossible to extract any information out of bullshit, bullshit by definition is orthogonal to observable reality, it is neither truth, nor falsehood, it's pure empty words.
Noise might not contain information but the presence or absence of noise does.
It's asking you to deconstruct yourself before you even begin work. You are not allowed to come into a new group of people working with your preconceived notions on how to work effectively or work well with other people, you must be asked questions that kick your brain out of work mode and start making you work on your own character instead. You are to be hazed and integrated, a threshold guardian needs to be passed.
People with a reputation for getting results get to skip this step, the bottom line matters more than your character. But any company will hold up a boundary at the door to make sure you fit the mould, or at least don't sink the ship.
The fundamental problem of bringing the unknown into the known has to have some boundary, what that is that makes sense usually just rides a trend wave. Character and behavioural stuff is all the rage right now. It'll pass onto other things soon enough.
as a serial victim to sets of questions exactly like this earlier in my life, i've come to realize that 'Culture-fit' is really just a coded honesty test -- and the most deceptive thing about it is that straight honesty is one of the quickest ways to do poorly at it.
in other words, answering '1. Why do you want to work for our company?' with "Because I want a salary and I need to avoid destitution.' is a wholly appropriate answer, but it's wrong.
They actually just want you to evangelize the company for a few minutes and lay on how envious you are of those that have 'the opportunity' to 'be a part of the revolution at X-Co'.
Who would want to hire a candidate who cannot get through an interview without delving into their personal issues and giving sardonic, jaded answers? Hacker news is big on edgy developers who insist that they can work hard, solve problems and get along with everyone. But if you ask them to explain how they do that they cry oppression.
The relevant bit in "Why do you want to work for our company" is the unstated "...as oppose to another." Ideally the answer is some property of the company that aligns well with the candidates ideals. But it presupposes that the candidate knows of some attribute that fits this frame.
A better question might be to make the company attribute hypothetical. Something like: "if you could propose a rule for all employees at the company where you want to work, what would it be." You'd definitely need follow-up questions and promoting, but it could be way more insightful.
To be fair, most Software Engineers are able to secure multiple offers and even more interviews. Or at least that’s my impression which may be the result of survivorship bias.
And it only gets easier after your first gig.
In that instance, where an engineer can easily leave your company, it makes sense to want to ensure they really want the position since interviewing and onboarding are very expensive for a company as well as having someone leave with a bunch of institutional knowledge built up over the years.
It’s also probably the easiest question in the world to totally bullshit with just a vague grasp of what the company does.
“One of the things that really excited me about <company X> is the problems you must face dealing with <such large amounts of data, securing your system, supporting N users on the app at once, syncing data across data zones>” etc etc. or “I think it’d be really neat to work at a company in the <healthcare, finance, whatever> industry because I’ve always wanted to <improve lives, learn about high frequency trading>”
And even if it’s an easy enough thing to BS it should also be genuinely easy to find an exciting reason to want to work somewhere in our field.
A lot of people are jumping on #3 (Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work). While I agree that #3 deserves criticism, I feel like #6 (Tell me about your preferred workday) and #8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) are even more problematic. As an introvert, as someone who likes quiet, my ideal workday consists of me getting into work at ~7:30am, working until ~4:30pm with about an hour off for lunch. I accept that meetings are a necessary evil, but I maintain that their necessity does not diminish their evil. I especially despise the "daily standup", which is a completely pointless 15-20 minute interruption right during my peak concentration hours. And yet, if I actually gave that response to question #6, the best I could hope for is a sympathetic nod from my interviewer, and a mention about how they attempt to have a single day without meetings. Instead, I feel like I'm supposed to lie about how I like "collaboration" (code for meetings).
#8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) is, if anything, even worse. As someone who doesn't like parties, and who doesn't drink, I find it really awkward and draining to go out with coworkers. No offense, but if I'm with the same people for 40 hours a week, the last thing I want to do is spend more time with them (especially on a Friday afternoon or evening, which is when most after-work outings tend to occur). And yet, I feel like if I actually gave that answer at a lot of companies, I'd be immediately dismissed as "not a culture fit", even though my skills are a very good match for the position.
The most generic and obvious set of questions ever.
Every single interview I’ve participated in (on both sides) has included some or all of these questions. There isn’t really anything new or interesting here.
Many of those questions are iffy, a potential minefield or uninteresting, but this one (#3) is key and we use it a lot:
"Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work. What was the issue, and how did you approach it?"
What I like about it is that it isn't a trick question. Also, knowing beforehand you're going to be asked this won't help you to bullshit your way through -- either you did stuff and can answer questions about it or you don't. This question lets the interviewee discuss something they did and that they feel comfortable talking about, how they approached it, what their problem-solving approach was, etc. It also lets the interviewer ask follow-up questions about whatever sounds interesting to discuss in more detail.
After significant experience on both sides of the table I am completely lost.
As interviewer I feel the best I can do in the short time I have is to weed out those so incompetent and badly fitting where I wonder why they even applied for the job. E.g.Java developer position and they can't do a simple stream.filter.map.collect task.
As interviewee I rarely even get the slightest interest of actually taking the job if they want me.
I usually don't feel any enthusiasm on the other side and I have a hard time appearing to be enthusiastic myself. Candidates interests usually boil down to "I want more money", "I want a less outdated tech stack", "I want better management" and "I am depressed and want change for change's sake".
In the end, most software development jobs suck and employers are just looking for code monkeys, hoping they will find some that will stay for more than a year or two. Applicants are fed up with pretending they have any personal interest in software development beyond the wages they get for it.
So, I've been self-employed for 20 years, doing custom software development at home and short-term (typically <2weeks) on-site consulting).
I've been thinking about going back to work for a company full-time, as I'm getting tired of dealing with sales and marketing. I do it poorly.
I don't know how to answer these questions, by which I infer that long-term self-employed people are rarely hired at Google.
#2: the last company I worked at was in 1999. I don't remember enough about the culture to give a coherent answer. The on-site work I did for clients wasn't long enough for me to understand their culture.
#3: "independent troubleshooting and initiative" is all that can apply for someone who's self-employed.
#4: "a team project you did at work". The best I can do is describe how I work for other companies in my development work.
#5: I ... don't know how I would like to be managed. I guess, work with a manager who can help me figure out how I can be managed in a large corporate environment.
"Follow-up questions: Tell me about a disagreement you had with your last manager." ... Again, 1999.
Useless "world-as-you-want-it-to-be" rather than "world-as-it-actually-is" questions. These questions simply encourage the interviewee to guess expected answers and provide them with a smile. They mean nothing.
Until and unless companies learn that "Honesty" and "Trust"(from both sides) are the only things which matter when it comes to measuring intangible character traits these sorts of questionnaires are bunkum.
I must be lucky because I'm at the point in my career where I give these kind of questions direct but nuanced answers and let the chips fall where they may.
I'm definitely not everyone's "cultural fit" (a dog whistle term for legitimizing discrimination imo), but for companies that appreciate what I bring to the table, it's all the better.
Honesty and trust are definitely top values for me, and people who can't handle respectful and frank discussion can't handle me, so better to find out immediately, as early in the process as possible.
Does anyone have good ways to determine if a company is a good culture fit for you, as an interviewee? I had an in-person this week where I tried the reverse of some of these - "Can you tell me about a typical workday?" "How is the work-life balance here?" and I just got BS fluff answers like "Well there's a variety of technical problems to solve here".
I am so, so bad at this at this point I should be able to provide some pointers! But I can't. Interviewers lie. When I am the interviewer, I know I do. Or at least enhance the truth.
>How would you describe the culture at previous companies you’ve worked at?
Somehow this one sounds like, "tell me what you hated most about your last boss," insofar as it's a bit of a minefield to answer in a professional way.
I like to ask "what is/was your favorite and least favorite part of [Company's] [Department's] culture, that way there's a rough range that's specific to the department rather than ambiguous cultural perks.
I don't feel comfortable asking this question. Many of the people I interview are "headhunted" into an interview by an talent acquisition team. Are they even looking for a new job?
> My honest answer to "why do you want to work here?"
I want to chill and pace myself here. I'm looking to do 30+ hours of work per week on my projects outside of this dayjob, so it's important for you not bother me too much during my 40 hours here.
My only goal is to build a company on the side. I've turned down better jobs just so I work in an environment and with coworkers that I fucking hate, so that I am extremely motivated to do whatever it takes to have my own business. Overall this job is just a paycheck - a necessary distraction to maintain a reasonable standard of living, and completely irrelevant to any of my goals in life. If contract work didn't cause too much stress/friction for me, I would be doing that for money. I hope you understand that I want to see you fail, this company fail, and any project I'm on to fail miserably. I will do the work you assign me according to spec, but please remember to leave me the fuck alone.
It's a weird question because one of the reasons I'm interviewing is to decide if I wanna work at your company or not. It's like if the candidate asked the interviewer "why do you want to hire me?"
fwiw, I've answered these in the past with "I'm not sure, I'm evaluating if I want to". I've had interesting conversations based on that. And, as far as I can tell, it didn't affect the outcome negatively.
For you as the interviewer, an answer like that is a great hook to ask "well, what does matter to you? What would convince you to work here?" It'll tell you a lot about fit or not :)
We have such silly silver-bullet-like talking points at my company. I don't follow them. It is to me too easy to make up/twist past experience to match what the interview wants to hear. Oh yeah I hit that wall and used that clever way to ship in time... Oh yeah I learnt from such and such mistake... not a fan.
Instead, prior to the ITW I define clearly (with myself or an other interviewer) the information I want to hear or the parts of the intellect/emotions I want to feel.
Example: wanna check if the candidate is autonomous? Instead of asking him if he prefers working in a big or small (or no) team and get a generic/boring answer, I will ask the candidate how they prioritize tasks when no workflow can help them. Do they rely on gut feeling? perceived ROI? ask the manager? the client? In this mindset I know directly if there's a clear match, and if not it is easy to dig in their way of thinking with a follow-up question (why/how?).
Takes a bit of improvisation/reactivity but at least I feel like I keep things interesting for everyone in the room when doing so.
Classic HN, assuming these questions are only for technical roles.
If the only true signal in an interview is weeding out completely unacceptable candidates, these are great questions because the only goal should be staying in your lane with two hands on the wheel.
Also, reversing the questions can be insightful as a candidate.
Personally I think the biggest disconnect comes in the job descriptions and postings: a lot of these preferences companies have about their candidates could just be openly posted and the candidates could self select themselves for fit.
These questions are good and seem standard to me. Whenever interview questions come up on HN there are always many comments refuting them. Any behavioral/culture/softskill questions will be bullshitted by sociopaths and liars. Any technical questions will be biased toward competitive coders and leetcode cramers, and they aren't relevant for position X anyway. IQ tests and brain teasers are less relevant for the job and in some cases potentially illegal. Take home tests take up too might time that you don't get compensated for. Contract to hire takes even more time and doesn't work for candidates that already have full time work. Not everyone has side projects that can be evaluated or contributes to open source, and even if they do it's impossible to tell if the candidate did th actual work. Every way of evaluating programmers sucks unless I'm missing a magic bullet?
My question is at what point does a candidate show such skill at gaming interview system(s) that it doesn't matter if they are bullshitting or had to study for your interview? If they apply the same skills to the job they're likely to be successful in most tech roles, and given corporate or start up structures and politics these candidates might be significantly better than more "genuine" candidates. The only places I think standard tech interview variants might break down is hiring for creativity and for ethical behavior (ethical behavior and rule following being different things). I'm not sure if either of those are important in most tech roles and they might actually be determintal.
Ask developers about projects they’ve worked on and have the technical skills to evaluate the depth of their answers. It works every time for me, it’s fair and even fun for the interviewee and it’s really fast. I’m often to a hire/no hire decision in 30 mins.
No culture questions (I’m happy to manage all kinds of people). No technical challenges. The more you do this, the better you get at it.
I'm not saying I agree with this, but I think their implication is that the candidate will have prepared a generic answer that isn't necessarily honest or useful. If it's a question they haven't prepped for, they are more likely to give an honest answer rather than one they read on a blog post by a hiring platform company.
These questions assume the person has significant prior experience, which makes them unusable for a decent amount of hiring.
At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them. It's impractical to ask a bunch of open ended questions like this, and also engineering questions, in a 45 or 60 minute time slot.
> At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them.
I would love to be wrong, but interviewing still seems more magic than science. I've interviewed for positions and think I did great, and did not get a job, and for others, did poorly and did get an offer. On the other side, I've hired promising candidates that turned out terrible, and questionable candidates that turned out great.
There are some things you can do to filter out the worst of folks (e.g., a fiz-buz test or evaluating basic communication skills), but these generally just filter out the bottom 20%. It's maddeningly difficult to differentiate between the middle 50% and the top 20%.
When you occasionally find a rock-star, they generally know they're a rock-star and demand rock-star pay. The top 5% of candidates is rarely 2X more productive than the top 10%, but they can demand much higher salaries because they are easier to identify.
[+] [-] msum|6 years ago|reply
- What's your mechanism for bias self-check?
- If someone gives you specs and you notice that something is off, what do you do?
- If you have to solve a problem you haven't solved before, how do you approach it?
- What's your take on accessibility on the web?
- What's your process like for deciding that you're at the point in your career where you can mentor others?
- What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked?
- You're just about to finish a feature and have a great idea for improving it. What do you do?
For all of these things, people will likely give different answers but those answers will tell me a lot about whether or not they would end up being really useful for the kinds of teams I build.
[+] [-] quanticle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tabtab|6 years ago|reply
- What's your mechanism for bias self-check?
Debate. I like debating, I have to admit. It's a great way to sharpen one's logic. But, one has to careful to not get labeled as "argumentative".
- If someone gives you specs and you notice that something is off, what do you do?
I always have suggestions or questions on any non-trivial spec. I list them up and email them out to the project manager. I do try to be polite in my criticism, though. Example: "I'm concerned that X may confuse users. Here's an alternative to consider."
- If you have to solve a problem you haven't solved before, how do you approach it?
I try to ponder such longer than normal rather than go with the first approach that pops into my head. I may work on something else while the idea dances around in the back of my head. Sometimes I dream up solutions at night. It sounds cliche, but it's true.
- What's your take on accessibility on the web?
Managers and users often like fancy UI's that may run into accessibility problems. It's a tricky thing to balance. Eye-candy does "sell" a UI, and accessibility often hampers that. Sometimes I try to find ways to spruce up a UI that don't harm accessibility, such as improving logos or including interesting "side" graphics that don't interfere with the primary function.
- What's your process like for deciding that you're at the point in your career where you can mentor others?
If I feel I can help somebody without offending them, I will often just jump in and do task-specific mentoring. But I wouldn't want to do such full time.
- What do you prefer to do when you see someone else getting nit-picked?
I will defend them if their ideas or work have merit. If not, there's probably a reason they create team friction, and to be frank, they probably should change careers into something that's a better fit for them. Often times such people are not "bad", rather just in the wrong field.
- You're just about to finish a feature and have a great idea for improving it. What do you do?
I'll check with my supervisor. If I'm enthusiastic about the better variation, he or she will typically allow me to go with the better one once they know me. If time is tight, it may have to wait until the next version. I will work extra hours if I feel it's a compelling feature.
[+] [-] Jach|6 years ago|reply
The purpose of the interview for the interviewer: deciding between "no, don't hire this person", "maybe, we'll decide later with more data or after comparing with another person", and "yes, hire".
The purpose of the interview for the interviewee: deciding "yes/no, I want to continue with this company" and conditionally if yes trying their best to get the interviewer into the "yes, hire" state.
I'm only going to pick on one of these questions, but they all have the same problem in that they're not (to me) very effective means at fulfilling the purpose since they'll select for candidates most capable of reading your mind, not actually really useful candidates. When you ask "what's your take on accessibility on the web?", the candidate is thinking many things at once. Here are some: 1) do I have a take and what is it? 2) what's the answer the interviewer wants to hear? 3) if my answer is wrong does that make it impossible to get into the "no, don't hire" state? 4) will I know once I answer?
Maybe you want a take that says accessibility is important despite the added costs, because humanism or whatever. If they say accessibility isn't important, because the costs don't justify it, you put them in the "no" bucket. Or perhaps it's vice versa, or you analyze the issue through some other framework. Maybe you really just want to see if they can converse about it at all, and will devil's-advocate the opposite of what they say, and only put them in the "no" bucket if they can't converse or start screaming at you.
In any case, I don't think you're being fair to the candidate and you're likely wasting time. If you just want to test ability to converse, and don't actually care what they personally believe, state that in the question and don't ask for their actual belief: "I'd like to have a sort of philosophical discussion with you about accessibility on the web. Let's imagine I ask you ... and you feel ..." If you actually have a specific range of answers in mind that can put someone in the "no" bucket, put that information in the job description requirements. "Expected to design with accessibility in mind." fits the first of my maybes, "Expected to move fast and not spend time on non-MVP work like accessibility." fits the vice-versa. Presto, no mind games, no wasted time for everyone because it wasn't clear until you asked your question that you hold opposite views and thus this is a "no". Maybe you're worried about liars, which you have to be anyway since plenty of people apply to coding positions without being able to code, so you might ask a more specific question (like we do by asking them to code something) around accessibility that makes clear what conclusion you expect (it matches the job description) and that you're looking for some sort of reasoning for why that conclusion is such in their mind.
Maybe since you're mentioning "end up being really useful" (as opposed to just useful) you don't weigh answers to these questions as hard "yes" or "no" filters, but just "maybes" that you can subjectively reflect upon later (e.g. by adding up a bunch of "maybes" you've recast to point-weighted soft yes/nos that can cancel each other). Fine, you can still put "Bonus:" in the job description, rather than "Required:", so that candidates know ahead of time that if they can only get to the "maybe" state the presence/absence of those certain "Bonus" attributes will influence their chances of moving from "maybe" to "yes". If they're already uncertain about "yes", and see a lack of "bonus" attributes on top of that, they're likely to not bother, again saving everyone's time.
It's fine to distinguish between "really useful" and "useful". Questions that can distinguish between degrees of "maybe" between candidates aren't bad, but they should be back-loaded as much as possible, and only used when the front-loaded yes/no questions have been asked and you're still in a state of uncertainty about which candidate would really be better, lamenting that you only have the budget for one of them. How many of those do you get?
[+] [-] Data_Junkie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnspirit|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] HarryHirsch|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baxtr|6 years ago|reply
It’s important to understand that these questions are just the starting point of a conversation to understand how a person thinks and acts. It’s impossible to make things up with a good recruiter because there’s no way you know beforehand how deep and where he will go with his follow-up questions
[+] [-] throwaway_law|6 years ago|reply
That's so funny, I read these question's and though I could consolidate them into a single question:
"How well can you bullshit and talk about things entirely immaterial to work?"
Seems a lot of people are chiming in to say how great question #3 is (how do/did you solve a problem at work)...I've gotten this in interviews and told them the Mad Men/Don Draper story of needing a new ad for my client "Lucky Strike" because the attorney General was going to prohibit our existing ads, complete with the pitch how I convinced the client its the greatest opportunity in marketing, asked them how they make their product....stopped them in their tracks, said that's it: "Its Toasted". Interviewers seem to love that story, and if they have seen Mad Men they seem to love it even more. Other times I told them about selling Mangos when I was a child...they love that one too, nothing more bullshitters love than other bullshitters.
[+] [-] decebalus1|6 years ago|reply
My take is that you need to project the image of a professional, match your resume experience, don't be combative and basically show that you can be a valuable drone. Even the fact that you can bullshit this with a straight face and not go candid on the interviewer is a positive data point, as that's basically 80% of working in a corporation. But again, the hiring manager can cherry pick positives/negatives based on what he actually wants to do.
[+] [-] bduerst|6 years ago|reply
The target audience for this is small to medium businesses, not corporations or competitive startups, who would be potential customers. It's more of a starting place for people who do not think about this much.
My guess is that HN is not the target audience for this blog post, so take what the simplicity of what is said with a huge grain of salt.
[+] [-] kaibee|6 years ago|reply
Noise might not contain information but the presence or absence of noise does.
[+] [-] rasz|6 years ago|reply
You might find it telling that Google is censoring word "bullshit" on YT as of yesterday : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHvkEPL7mVA
[+] [-] friendlybus|6 years ago|reply
People with a reputation for getting results get to skip this step, the bottom line matters more than your character. But any company will hold up a boundary at the door to make sure you fit the mould, or at least don't sink the ship.
The fundamental problem of bringing the unknown into the known has to have some boundary, what that is that makes sense usually just rides a trend wave. Character and behavioural stuff is all the rage right now. It'll pass onto other things soon enough.
[+] [-] helpadvisors|6 years ago|reply
1.) In terms of a daily schedule, on a scale from 1-10 how much are you a creature of habit?
2.) If you need a quick answer from a person 20 ft. away, do you send an email or walk over?
3.) What strategies do you have for completing tasks you don't like doing?
From my perspective interviews can be super biased.
Skill set aside, I think we naturally want to hire someone who answers our questions in the same way we would.
IMHO.
[+] [-] steelframe|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] serf|6 years ago|reply
in other words, answering '1. Why do you want to work for our company?' with "Because I want a salary and I need to avoid destitution.' is a wholly appropriate answer, but it's wrong.
They actually just want you to evangelize the company for a few minutes and lay on how envious you are of those that have 'the opportunity' to 'be a part of the revolution at X-Co'.
[+] [-] gatherhunterer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tylerl|6 years ago|reply
A better question might be to make the company attribute hypothetical. Something like: "if you could propose a rule for all employees at the company where you want to work, what would it be." You'd definitely need follow-up questions and promoting, but it could be way more insightful.
[+] [-] codyb|6 years ago|reply
And it only gets easier after your first gig.
In that instance, where an engineer can easily leave your company, it makes sense to want to ensure they really want the position since interviewing and onboarding are very expensive for a company as well as having someone leave with a bunch of institutional knowledge built up over the years.
It’s also probably the easiest question in the world to totally bullshit with just a vague grasp of what the company does.
“One of the things that really excited me about <company X> is the problems you must face dealing with <such large amounts of data, securing your system, supporting N users on the app at once, syncing data across data zones>” etc etc. or “I think it’d be really neat to work at a company in the <healthcare, finance, whatever> industry because I’ve always wanted to <improve lives, learn about high frequency trading>”
And even if it’s an easy enough thing to BS it should also be genuinely easy to find an exciting reason to want to work somewhere in our field.
[+] [-] quanticle|6 years ago|reply
#8 (Describe your preferred relationship with coworkers) is, if anything, even worse. As someone who doesn't like parties, and who doesn't drink, I find it really awkward and draining to go out with coworkers. No offense, but if I'm with the same people for 40 hours a week, the last thing I want to do is spend more time with them (especially on a Friday afternoon or evening, which is when most after-work outings tend to occur). And yet, I feel like if I actually gave that answer at a lot of companies, I'd be immediately dismissed as "not a culture fit", even though my skills are a very good match for the position.
[+] [-] cgrealy|6 years ago|reply
Every single interview I’ve participated in (on both sides) has included some or all of these questions. There isn’t really anything new or interesting here.
[+] [-] the_af|6 years ago|reply
"Tell me about a time you solved a problem at work. What was the issue, and how did you approach it?"
What I like about it is that it isn't a trick question. Also, knowing beforehand you're going to be asked this won't help you to bullshit your way through -- either you did stuff and can answer questions about it or you don't. This question lets the interviewee discuss something they did and that they feel comfortable talking about, how they approached it, what their problem-solving approach was, etc. It also lets the interviewer ask follow-up questions about whatever sounds interesting to discuss in more detail.
[+] [-] Traubenfuchs|6 years ago|reply
As interviewer I feel the best I can do in the short time I have is to weed out those so incompetent and badly fitting where I wonder why they even applied for the job. E.g.Java developer position and they can't do a simple stream.filter.map.collect task.
As interviewee I rarely even get the slightest interest of actually taking the job if they want me.
I usually don't feel any enthusiasm on the other side and I have a hard time appearing to be enthusiastic myself. Candidates interests usually boil down to "I want more money", "I want a less outdated tech stack", "I want better management" and "I am depressed and want change for change's sake".
In the end, most software development jobs suck and employers are just looking for code monkeys, hoping they will find some that will stay for more than a year or two. Applicants are fed up with pretending they have any personal interest in software development beyond the wages they get for it.
[+] [-] eesmith|6 years ago|reply
I've been thinking about going back to work for a company full-time, as I'm getting tired of dealing with sales and marketing. I do it poorly.
I don't know how to answer these questions, by which I infer that long-term self-employed people are rarely hired at Google.
#2: the last company I worked at was in 1999. I don't remember enough about the culture to give a coherent answer. The on-site work I did for clients wasn't long enough for me to understand their culture.
#3: "independent troubleshooting and initiative" is all that can apply for someone who's self-employed.
#4: "a team project you did at work". The best I can do is describe how I work for other companies in my development work.
#5: I ... don't know how I would like to be managed. I guess, work with a manager who can help me figure out how I can be managed in a large corporate environment.
"Follow-up questions: Tell me about a disagreement you had with your last manager." ... Again, 1999.
[+] [-] rramadass|6 years ago|reply
Until and unless companies learn that "Honesty" and "Trust"(from both sides) are the only things which matter when it comes to measuring intangible character traits these sorts of questionnaires are bunkum.
[+] [-] jaggederest|6 years ago|reply
I'm definitely not everyone's "cultural fit" (a dog whistle term for legitimizing discrimination imo), but for companies that appreciate what I bring to the table, it's all the better.
Honesty and trust are definitely top values for me, and people who can't handle respectful and frank discussion can't handle me, so better to find out immediately, as early in the process as possible.
[+] [-] skybrian|6 years ago|reply
Also, some people are bad at guessing expected answers.
[+] [-] PascLeRasc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codyb|6 years ago|reply
If you can’t name a single issue in your org that smells fishy to me, but an honest answer indicates an open culture and decent people.
[+] [-] Traubenfuchs|6 years ago|reply
Only experiencing it will tell you the truth...
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
Somehow this one sounds like, "tell me what you hated most about your last boss," insofar as it's a bit of a minefield to answer in a professional way.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] creaghpatr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Pirate-of-SV|6 years ago|reply
I don't feel comfortable asking this question. Many of the people I interview are "headhunted" into an interview by an talent acquisition team. Are they even looking for a new job?
[+] [-] halfjoking|6 years ago|reply
I want to chill and pace myself here. I'm looking to do 30+ hours of work per week on my projects outside of this dayjob, so it's important for you not bother me too much during my 40 hours here.
My only goal is to build a company on the side. I've turned down better jobs just so I work in an environment and with coworkers that I fucking hate, so that I am extremely motivated to do whatever it takes to have my own business. Overall this job is just a paycheck - a necessary distraction to maintain a reasonable standard of living, and completely irrelevant to any of my goals in life. If contract work didn't cause too much stress/friction for me, I would be doing that for money. I hope you understand that I want to see you fail, this company fail, and any project I'm on to fail miserably. I will do the work you assign me according to spec, but please remember to leave me the fuck alone.
So... when can I start?
[+] [-] astura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] groby_b|6 years ago|reply
For you as the interviewer, an answer like that is a great hook to ask "well, what does matter to you? What would convince you to work here?" It'll tell you a lot about fit or not :)
[+] [-] vgrafe|6 years ago|reply
Instead, prior to the ITW I define clearly (with myself or an other interviewer) the information I want to hear or the parts of the intellect/emotions I want to feel.
Example: wanna check if the candidate is autonomous? Instead of asking him if he prefers working in a big or small (or no) team and get a generic/boring answer, I will ask the candidate how they prioritize tasks when no workflow can help them. Do they rely on gut feeling? perceived ROI? ask the manager? the client? In this mindset I know directly if there's a clear match, and if not it is easy to dig in their way of thinking with a follow-up question (why/how?).
Takes a bit of improvisation/reactivity but at least I feel like I keep things interesting for everyone in the room when doing so.
[+] [-] makeramen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kthejoker2|6 years ago|reply
If the only true signal in an interview is weeding out completely unacceptable candidates, these are great questions because the only goal should be staying in your lane with two hands on the wheel.
Also, reversing the questions can be insightful as a candidate.
Personally I think the biggest disconnect comes in the job descriptions and postings: a lot of these preferences companies have about their candidates could just be openly posted and the candidates could self select themselves for fit.
[+] [-] Impossible|6 years ago|reply
My question is at what point does a candidate show such skill at gaming interview system(s) that it doesn't matter if they are bullshitting or had to study for your interview? If they apply the same skills to the job they're likely to be successful in most tech roles, and given corporate or start up structures and politics these candidates might be significantly better than more "genuine" candidates. The only places I think standard tech interview variants might break down is hiring for creativity and for ethical behavior (ethical behavior and rule following being different things). I'm not sure if either of those are important in most tech roles and they might actually be determintal.
[+] [-] malvosenior|6 years ago|reply
No culture questions (I’m happy to manage all kinds of people). No technical challenges. The more you do this, the better you get at it.
[+] [-] nfRfqX5n|6 years ago|reply
as if being prepared for a question is a bad thing
[+] [-] ascorbic|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OhHeyItsE|6 years ago|reply
Pretty sure the candidate is supposed to ask the interviewer that one...
[+] [-] dx87|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nitwit005|6 years ago|reply
At my previous job, we got a set of generic questions like this on our hiring forms from HR. I don't think anyone in my group ever asked them. It's impractical to ask a bunch of open ended questions like this, and also engineering questions, in a 45 or 60 minute time slot.
[+] [-] speedplane|6 years ago|reply
I would love to be wrong, but interviewing still seems more magic than science. I've interviewed for positions and think I did great, and did not get a job, and for others, did poorly and did get an offer. On the other side, I've hired promising candidates that turned out terrible, and questionable candidates that turned out great.
There are some things you can do to filter out the worst of folks (e.g., a fiz-buz test or evaluating basic communication skills), but these generally just filter out the bottom 20%. It's maddeningly difficult to differentiate between the middle 50% and the top 20%.
When you occasionally find a rock-star, they generally know they're a rock-star and demand rock-star pay. The top 5% of candidates is rarely 2X more productive than the top 10%, but they can demand much higher salaries because they are easier to identify.