Job Interview Questions That Mean You’re Not Getting Hired…And One That Means You Are

http://glipress.blogspot.com/2008/12/5-interview-questions-that-mean-youre.html

by bdfh42 • 18 years ago

63 53 18 years ago

glipress.blogspot.com

fbbwsa• 18 years ago

Wow!

Insightful! I guess I happen to be the very rare counterexample in that at some point in every interview process I've been through, I've been asked questions like the ones the author says won't get me hired.

And I've never been asked "can you do this job?" (not so bluntly anyways, though obviously you are evaluated on that to some degree)

Those questions don't mean you are not getting hired at all. They are (for better or for worse) standard practice by HR personnel. They might not tell you anything about a candidates capacity to do a job, but a lot of times personality fit is just as important. And I can tell a lot about a person by their answers to really stupid questions (even if they are canned, planned out, rehearsed responses).

I want to work with cool people and have the pleasure of doing so. If competency was the only factor my firm asked for when hiring, I'd probably be working somewhere else.

Ability is a necessary, but insufficient condition for employment, in my opinion.

THATS why the employers ask you the questions that "Mean You're Not Getting Hired"

Retric• 18 years ago

The real question is not can you do this job but are you useful aka worth the time and money it's going to take to employ you. Which is the point of the other questions.

Basically, they want to know how useful you are for this job and if this project tanks are we going to need to fire you or can you be used to do some other task.

vlad2• 18 years ago

Not insightful at all.

nihilocrat• 18 years ago

Yeah, a lot of this stuff seems sort of obvious, but if it's so obvious that these questions are bullshit, why do interviewers keep asking them?

Thankfully, any smart interviewer already knows this. Being asked these questions is a sign you might not want to work for these people because they are not very smart and/or don't think about the things that they say.

To be honest, in the interviews where I thought "wow, these people know what they're doing", they did not ask these questions.

vlad2• 18 years ago

Quite often, the most random and insight-free blog posts containing no substance or logical deduction are upvoted because of a strong title. For some reason, some readers try to pull out whatever tiny bit of insight that the article might contain, to make up the for the time lost reading it. I say, write it off as a loss and move on. There are no logical deductions to see in the article.

What does it matter if a certain question shows up in an interview? Why try to analyze every word? In the end, you either did well, or you didn't, and they either did well, or made a bad impression on you. Just answer the question and remain friendly whether you still think you're interested in them or not--not all questions are going to be highly technical. At the end of the day, it's just another person sitting across the table.

gaius3• 18 years ago

When I interview people I have a form from HR I need to fill in and some of those are on it as mandatory questions. I tick the box and move on quickly.

msluyter• 18 years ago

While I agreed with the article that most of the questions are pointless or at the very least suboptimal, I disagree that they imply that you're not getting hired. I think I've gotten some variant of "what are your weak points" in every interview I've been on (and I've been hired on several occasions. ;)). And I've sometimes asked the "I see you worked at company X doing Y... tell me about that" type of question as a sort of warmup before asking more technical questions.

Finally, I don't think the "how many gas stations are there" type of questions are totally pointless (though I don't generally ask them.) They reveal something about how a candidate attempts to solve problems, and the one thing you don't want to see is the candidate simply say "I have no idea..." without at least trying. I think there is a danger if a company over relies on such questions, however.

mikeryan2• 18 years ago

Pretty damn true.

I've done my share of hiring in the last couple of years, allow me to opine on this post.

"Tell me about yourself." Common question, usually my first question with candidates just to let them talk a bit about themselves and let them tell me what they feel is important. It also just breaks the ice even with a (hopefully) easy question. It doesn't mean you're not getting hired.

"What are your biggest flaws?" - I don't use this, its a bullshit question and I don't know anyone who does. No one in their right mind is going to tell you the truth. "What are you strengths" is however a decent question, like "tell me about yourself" it allows the interviewee to tell you something about themselves that you may have missed.

"Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" - Not actually a dumb question, most people don't use it correctly. The answer to this question can be useful from a "goodness of fit" perspective. Do their goals align with how your organization works? This isn't a make or break question but it can get interesting answers.

"Tell me about a time when you..." - Sorry this is the main type of question you should b e asking. This is the opportunity to ask the question "how are you going to solve the problems that we're going to give you?"

"How many gas stations are in the United States?" - Ya crap question, but some engineering managers like them.

njharman2• 18 years ago

> "Tell me about a time when you..." - Sorry this is the main type of question you should b e asking. This is the opportunity to ask the question "how are you going to solve the problems that we're going to give you?"

Probably what you really want is someone who solves problems not someone who can eloquently describe problems and their solutions, under pressure, in a few minutes or less.

That question is a classic example of testing the wrong thing.

It's better for you to describe an actual problem and have them solve it or discuss how they would go out solving. Which btw is typically a needed skill (being able to reason out and weigh solutions with a team)

time_management• 18 years ago

How many gas stations are in the US?

Correct answer: Over 9000.

jjs• 18 years ago

The question that most highly correlates to getting hired is: "Hey, friend-or-acquaintance, my team at BigCo is hiring. Are you interested?"

iron_ball• 18 years ago

The OP mentioned this up front; the interview process is only necessary if your network falls through.

nostrademons3• 18 years ago

Many places will interview you anyway, just so they can justify to themselves that they really were thorough.

My first job out of college, they made me an offer at the beginning of the interview process, because I'd interned with them before and they had a fairly good idea what I could do. The rest of the interviews were basically get-to-know-the-people-hired-after-your-internship.

Also, at bigger companies, your referral may not be from the group or specialty you'll actually be working with, and so you'll have to go through the interview process itself to make sure they can stand you. My Google application process was like this, and my IBM one would've been had I pursued it. It's still a big positive, that someone in the company is willing to vouch for you.

azanar• 18 years ago

The interview process, or some sort of skills assessment process, is still necessary even after the referral. Otherwise, you run the risk of hiring someone akin to the boss' nephew who claims web programming skills, but has never been in the same room as someone who has those skills. Relying on friends and colleagues for advice on who to hire is good, but it can turn bad if that is the only data point you rely on.

sdfx2• 18 years ago

"How many gas stations are in the US? [...] the best response is to compliment the interviewer on offering such an interesting and intriguing question, then say 'I don’t know.' Offer to research the answer and get back to her or him."

Actually, this is a fermi problem. [1] The purpose of this question is to figure out if someone can break a question down into parts and estimate reasonable values. But even more so, it is supposed to test whether you are enthusiastic about strange and puzzling problems. [2]

Whether you think these questions are stupid or not, the right answer isn't "I give up, just google it", but rather "let me make some assumptions and calculate a value based on some estimates"

Having said that, I think the number is arround 100,000 [3]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem [2] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html [3] http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi975.htm

jimbokun2• 18 years ago

Interesting. My first guess was 300,000.

The town I grew up in is about 1,000 people, and has a gas station. Most of the small towns around that one of comparable size also have a gas station. So I figured if the population is about 300,000,000 and people per gas-station is about 1,000, then there are about 300,000 gas stations in the U.S.

sdfx2• 18 years ago

This is the way I would answered in an interview as well. I guess it heavily relies on the type of town you are from. Even smaller towns in remote areas tend to have a gas station. But I think whats important is not your answer, but how you came to the number, and 3x off is actually not bad for something you don't know anything about.

chett• 18 years ago

Funny, I came to the same estimate using my town of 30,000 with approximately 30 gas stations.

maw• 18 years ago

I used the same method but of course had different numbers to plug in: 4 gas stations (I am probably forgetting a few in parts of town I didn't frequent) in a town of roughly 10,000 people.

Maybe you'd get a better figure going by number of pumps per person and then <strike>making up</strike> coming up with an average number of pumps per station. For example, (I'm guessing that) the lone gas station in a 200 person down doesn't have a lot of pumps.

dhimes2• 18 years ago

I came to 200,000 by guessing how many were in an area served by one high school, and trying to remember how many high schools are in the US. Odd, but I figured a high school grouping would be some indicator of economic activity and thus civilian gas needs.

blackguardx2• 18 years ago

If I was an interviewer and a job applicant told me that he would "google" the answer to a question, I would quickly show him the door and put his resume in the circular file.

fp• 18 years ago

Why? It's often a good idea to google for an answer. See the second result for "number of gas stations in the us", for example:

http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/number-gas-stations-us-1995...

If you want the candidate to show his reasoning abilities by making good guesses based on reasonable assumptions, you should tell him to do so beforehand.

jmtame• 18 years ago

I would be surprised by the amount of people who have the intuition to actually go to Google in the first place. It's a lot better than a "Hmm, I don't know--how many?"

It shows that someone is willing to go and seek out the answer on their own.

scott_s• 18 years ago

What do you do when you come across a simple fact that you need to know in order to continue?

njharman2• 18 years ago

I'm just the opposite.

I want practical, get the job done type people.

I don't want cowboys who are more interested in clever solutions and/or impressing others with their knowledge, "obvious" intelligence, or skillz.

I certainly don't want some douche sitting in his chair theorizing from first principals when they could have googled the answer or asked team mate for help.

Finally the era when what one knows was self-contained in their heads is over. My memory and knowledge are huge and they are kept in google and wikipedia.

nir• 18 years ago

I guess this makes sense, if you're hiring for Yahoo! Search.

pavelludiq3• 18 years ago

My answer would be to give a completely random number and then justify it by quoting Dilbert:

Dilbert: Studies have shown that accurate numbers are not that much more useful than the ones you make up.

PHB: How many studies showed that?

Dilbert: 87

I probably wouldn't give this answer in an interview, im more of the "I don't know" group of people.

p.s. Dilbert strip: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-08/

jimbokun2• 18 years ago

"You are sitting at home when your kitchen sink springs a leak that you can’t fix. You reach for the phone book and call a plumber. When the plumber arrives you ask “before you get started, could you tell me where you see yourself in five years?”

Your 1987 Impala has finally bit the dust. You call a tow truck to haul it away to be crushed or recycled. Before turning the keys over to the driver you ask “What are your biggest flaws?”

*You and your family are taking a trip by plane. You are all a little nervous, as most people are when flying. To assuage your fears to walk up to the pilot and ask him “How many crosswalks are in New York City?”"

Certainly puts things in perspective. This seems an excellent criterion for determining what are good and bad interview questions, assuming that your goal is actually to hire someone to do a job.

lacker• 18 years ago

That's an impossible test. What would you ask an airplane pilot to ensure he's a skilled pilot? No magic question will let a random unskilled person effectively interview for a technical position.

plinkplonk• 18 years ago

"No magic question will let a random unskilled person effectively interview for a technical position."

Exactly! Maybe pilots should interview pilots about the nuances of piloting (and once that talk is over, probably ask him to fly with the interviewer in teh copilot role) and leave out the "where do you see yourself in five years" type questions?

andreyf• 18 years ago

Following this advice will work if you're hiring contractors to do a specific project. But when you're building a company, you're looking for generally smart, enthusiastic people that will be able to do the jobs that need to be done now, and also the jobs that will need to be done when the current projects are done, or when they decide to move to a different team.

A super-hacker-who-can-do-the-job might be useful to hire for a specific project, but will they be a useful employee when the company decides to change directions or technologies?

RK• 18 years ago

One of my most interesting interviews was at a defense contractor. "Can you do this job?" was a very difficult question to get at, because they couldn't even tell me what the job was! As you might imagine, they had to use a lot of very general language. I did get an offer from them in the end.

danw• 18 years ago

“Tell me about yourself” is a hugely useful question. It gives you a chance to take control of the interview and steer it towards the areas you perform best or can talk about most persuasively.

geebee• 18 years ago

I don't like asking "what's your greatest weakness". However, other people on my team have insisted on asking this question during interviews.

In this case, I use it to gauge how an applicant handles a somewhat inappropriate question that he/she probably shouldn't answer honestly.

nostrademons3• 18 years ago

The first question my Google phone interviewer asked me was "So...tell me about yourself." One phone interview, 4 in-person interviews, about 2 dozen emails back-and-forth with my recruiter, one hiring committee, several VPs, and a couple days held up on Larry Page's desk later, I was hired.

It's a conversation starter. It gives them a baseline to open things up. Your answers after that, once you've gotten into the swing of things, determine whether you'll be hired.

Also, an interviewer will almost never ask you "Can you do this job?" or "What does this job entail?" How do they know you're being truthful, or even if you are, how do they know that you're not just wrong? It's your responsibility to show the answer to these, through the questions you ask your interviewers. Nearly all interviewers will ask "Do you have any questions for me?" - that's your chance to show that you're interested in the meat of the job itself.

tocomment2• 18 years ago

Mine didn't go so well. They flew me out there, then on interview day all of the managers were "busy" so I met with two guys and that was it. 12 hours of flying and two missed days of work for a two hour interview :-(

nostrademons3• 18 years ago

Ouch. That sucks. I'd think that HR would be very careful about making sure the interviewers are actually available before bringing you out. With mine, there was some concern that it might actually get pushed past Thanksgiving due to lack of interviewer availability (thankfully not, and they got it in front of the hiring committee before the break).

My experience with Google HR in general was very positive, though of course "all's well that ends well", so my perspective might be a bit biased.

teamonkey• 18 years ago

"Can you do this job?"

"Yes, that's why I applied for the job."

mattmaroon2• 18 years ago

"What are your biggest flaws?"

My only flaw is that I don't have any flaws.

greendestiny• 18 years ago

I'm so awesome that it makes other people feel inadequate. Sorry.

mattmaroon2• 18 years ago

That's better.

amrithk• 18 years ago

Great post. I have been asked the same questions in many of my interviews before.

dustineichler• 18 years ago

Interesting... I just interviewed today at a startup that was very different from anything previous. It was actually good, but they asked at least 2 of the questions listed in the article.

coliveira• 18 years ago

I agree that many of the interview questions traditionally used are silly. But it difficult to avoid them if you want to be successful in the job search process.

grouchyOldGuy• 18 years ago

I've been on both sides of the interview table. I've always particpated as part of a team when interviewing, and I've asked the technical questions while others threw the "soft" questions ("What is your biggest flaw?", etc.) I've cared less about what they said but rather how they said it. Did they come across as arrogant, thoughtful, easily flustered, etc.? How they responded was more useful that what they responded.

Job Interview Questions That Mean You’re Not Getting Hired…And One That Means You Are

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