Inane job app questions

[Elok]

I just finished filling out an online application that asked me to rank, from best to worst, something like sixteen entirely different things. It was a drag and drop interface, and among the things I had to sort were "love of nature," "a speeding ticket/fine," "violent child abuse," "spreading false rumors," and "living a life of high moral/ethical principles."

This activity was followed by a barrage of about fifty repetitive multiple-choice questions of the "Do you prefer a steady workflow or a challenging rush" type. Since my honest answer to almost all such questions is, "well, it depends a lot on context, and what exactly you mean by that," by question twenty-five I was mostly busy wondering how inconsistent my answers were, trying to keep track of how I'd presented myself in previous questions. And when it asks me to evaluate my performance, do I get penalized for vanity if I always pick the best option, or am I really supposed to always say "outstanding" or "exceptional" to avoid getting shunted out by whatever algorithm they've developed to sort through this dreck? I know they're not making an actual human deal with the answers I'm giving.

For those of you like Rah who actually do hiring, do you guys actually use this stuff, or is it primarily a means of putting up an obstacle to discourage lazy applicants, or what?

[rah]

No matter the method, interviews are still not an exact science. You can never predict the best candidate. It has always been easier to predict the worst candidate. So most processes are designed for you to eliminate yourself. Over the years many different methods have been devised to do that. Behavioral interviews were always the most popular, but after a while people became familiar with the process were coached around it.
Profiling questions has always been popular but I've never been a fan of them since I don't always agree with their definitions. And again, once the patterns become known, they can be coached around. As a result, they keep trying to come up with different profiling type tests to keep candidates off balance. This one seems to fit that definition but even to me sound a bit on the bizarre side. And I'm not sure I would agree with the statistics that it stands behind. But the fact that you were unable to figure out what would be the "best acceptable answer" says a lot of thinking went into it. I'm sure they're feeling quite clever about it.

But since I actually work in research, I'd lean to the hooey side. And no I usually don't go along with the flavor of the month.

My goal is to do anything to keep the candidate talking. (and behavioral interviewing still accomplishes that, and people aren't coached for them as much anymore) If they don't say something stupid and eliminate themselves in 45 minutes and actually demonstrate knowledge that they've claimed on their resume, they become potential hires.

[loinburger]

I've been asked "fizz buzz" questions for senior programming positions: you have a counter iterating from 1 to N (usually N = 100), if the counter is divisible by 3 you output "fizz", if it's divisible by 5 you output "buzz", if it's divisible by both 3 and 5 you output "fizzbuzz". This is Programming 101 ****.

These people managed to turn this exercise into a thousands-of-lines-of-code "enterprise" project (as a joke)

[rah]

[loinburger]

The worst interview I ever had was with Amazon (who I learned shortly after is a terrible employer). It was a whiteboard programming exercise that went something like this:

Interviewer: Program a program that can distribute one thousand unique persistent IDs per second
loin: Okay I'd start with [puts some code on the whiteboard]
Interviewer: Aren't you going to end that line with a semicolon???
loin: Ummm... okay? [puts semicolon at the end of the offending line] And then I'd do this [writes down some more code]
Interviewer: That method overrides a superclass's method, aren't you going to put an "Override" annotation on it???

After another couple minutes of this petty bull**** I called off the interview. I flew all the way to Seattle for this (which admittedly isn't that far from Boise), what a waste of time.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

i use to ask questions like that in interviews.

now i just ask what do you like to do on weekends. maybe a few basic work questions just to verify they know what programming is.

but i would rather have someone who is not socially handicapped. If they are a good team player I'll teach them to code.

The best coder who can't work with anyone is no good.

[loinburger]

I only ever interview junior programmers, so I ask them ten moderately difficult junior programming questions (e.g. "write a program that finds the Nth Fibonacci number" or whatever, where if they implement the O(n!) algorithm and then can't explain why it's wrong then they fail), and if they answer five correct then they pass. I once had an idiot co-worker say something along the lines of "they really ought to answer all ten questions correctly," to which I asked him "would you have been able all ten questions correctly?" which made him my enemy up until he was fired for being awful.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

ha! I've asked, do you know how to pad this shipment number with zeros len 10.

no need to go on if you can't.

[rah]

I've had to hire programmers that were experienced in a different language than the one I'm looking for (only for entry level of course)
So I always would ask programming concept questions that could be applicable for any language.

If the kid has the logic chops, I can teach him any language.

Like asking a kid. Do you have to manipulate data much. 'YES", do character data much 'YES'. What function do you use the most when doing it. If they don't describe some type of substring function, or just stare blankly, SEE YA

[loinburger]

I've run into issues where they're looking for a C# programmer, but most of my experience is in Java (about 80/20 Java/C#). HR will say "how much C# experience do you have" and I'll say "two years, but with ten years of Java" and they'll say "Java is completely different from C#" and I'll say "how so?" and of course they can't answer because they're HR. If I can get past the HR hoop and into the technical interview then the interviewer will invariably say "Yeah, Java and C# are pretty much the same thing," but that's only happened once.

[rah]

In our company, HR feels the need to screen. They always ask me and I tell them 'Just verify that they're breathing" They got the hint very quickly.

[C0ckney]

i once gave a totally honest job interview. i answered every question honestly and kept a straight face, which was hard at times. it's actually remarkable how liberating it is to free oneself from the kind of rubbish that one is expected to regurgitate at interview. i kept it going for about twenty minutes. the interviewer didn't really know how to take me but he was a good sport.

it was full of answers like this:

i: how are you at being managed?
c: brilliant, as long as the manager stays out of my way and doesn't bust my balls with ridiculous nonsense.

..............

i: what is your greatest strength?
c: i have two: intelligence and adaptability. (gives an example)

i: and you biggest weakness?
c: i'm lazy.
i: you know most people wouldn't say something like that in a job interview.
c: that's because most people are liars.
i: right...and how does that affect your work?
c: well, it's related to my strengths, you see. i can learn how to do almost anything tolerably well within a very short space of time, but because of my laziness i never go beyond that, unless of course it's something that really interests me or promises some great reward.
i: and does this job fall into that category?
c: i should be astonished if it did.
..............

i: what led to you leaving job x?
c: i called the assistant manager a c*nt.
i: i see...and why did you do that?
c: because she was a c*nt.

..............

i: on a scale of one to ten, how much do you want this job?
c: well let's see, the money's not great, but i suppose for this area it's not terrible; the place is a bit hard to get to and i can see that becoming frustrating after a short time; the work itself seems pretty easy - you could probably train a monkey to do it - although of course it's completely uninteresting; likewise, i expect my co-workers will be on the bland side, but i did see a couple of pretty girls on my way in, so that's something to look forward to if i play my cards right...
i: *silence*
c: oh yes, so i suppose, all things considered, i would say three...no, three and a half out of ten.
i: OK, i think we'll leave it there.

[loinburger]

The better companies just use HR to verify that I'm not a felon or whatever.

I've often run into a situation where my ridiculously gray hair gets me into trouble, because interviewers aren't allowed to ask my age. I've learned to do the following:

Interviewer: What were you doing before 1999 (the year I entered college according to my resume)?
loin: I was in high school.
Interviewer: Does not compute.
loin: I understand that you can't ask my age, but I am 35 and was in high school prior to 1999. I have my genes to thank for my ridiculously gray hair.
Interviewer: Okay, just making sure you weren't in prison or whatever.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

I'm surprise it went past the lazy comment. slow day I guess.

[rah]

Until you got to the why you did that answer, you were scoring pretty good on my scale.

I've used the Lazy line before but I always follow it up with, it's really just another name for efficient.