Nightmare Interviews

Have been on both sides of the interview process, so I have seen some interesting questions.

Hopefully, I did a good job of interviewing people during my career.

I mostly based my decisions on capability to do the job and attitude of the person to see if they would fit with the organization.

The worst interview I ever had was with a company that readily admitted that the job would only last of about six months. Needless to say, I did not accept that position.

I too have been on both sides of the interview process.   I think that puzzles can have value, but I find having the person explain their process for solving the puzzle is far more valuable that the actual answer.  Work will have many puzzles of its own, and having the tools to creatively solve the puzzles is the important part.

During the course of being interviewed (and I am quite an expert here, as I have held many jobs throughout my career) I have been asked many puzzles. Some have been tough and others easy.  If I don't know the answer, I admit so, and offer to explain how I would solve it, or suggest an experience in my career where I solved a difficult problem an how I went about it.

I would never ask puzzle type questions.  I would expect the interviewee to present their solution to an IT System design, discuss their decisions, and talk about how they handled a situation that went wrong.  I’d be looking for intelligent approach and decision making and a pro-active approach to problem solving and knowing that they knew when to escalate outside the project.  I purposefully never asked anything of the nature of puzzles or obscure info. 

If I attended an interview where those types of questions came up or they were asking me to answer obscure questions that one would typically research if it ever came up then I wouldn’t be interested in working there.

For the coins, I believe 3 is the minimum number of weighings. The Kings I’m less sure about but I think 16.

Some people like artificial puzzles and some don't.  If your purpose in an interview is find a good solver of simple, bounded system problems then the questions suggested are fine (although the puzzles are very well known so the best solution may come from prior knowledge of it).

In real life problems tend to be much fuzzier and much less bounded and one of the things that may be important is the ability of the interviewee to chew away at a a problem over a long period (weeks , months or even years) - facility at solving coffee time challenges is not going to correlate well.

So you need to get the person talking, about real stuff, so you can attempt to work out if they are credible and capable. It's very hit and miss. I might consider showing them an actual problem and trying to get them to talk around it, but that isn't always feasible.

I don't ask stock questions to which you may well get a prepared answer..

Over the years I've taken on at least as many bad choices as good .........

MK

It is rare that the perfect candidate is available and keen to fill the particular job when it opens up. Choosing the best candidate can be extremely difficult, considering that in a year they could be a very different performer for many reasons, many of which may be unpredictable.

Correct on both answers.

I once had an interview where there were 14 senior staff in a conference room grilling me with a crazy array of questions. You could see the the political gamesmanship bubbling away. They would try to score points by asking obtuse questions or worse yet they would ask leading questions where if you answer in a way the would please the questioner, for sure someone else would take offense. At the end of that interrogation I did not want the job. It did prepare me for my next interview which was in a room with 6 professors and several other staff. In that one I aced every question and got a good job offer.

Yes, the interview process goes both ways.

It allows the company to find talent, but at the same time, they forget they are being assessed to see if the talent wants to work for them.

That is why I looked at the candidates attitude.

You can have someone who is very capable, but with the wrong attitude. They just do not fit in.

I have often taken someone who is not quite as good, but who was trainable and seldom did that not work out well.

This is a very good point.  In a Software group that I was managing, I was attempting to fill a position.  I had narrowed the field down to two candidates. I had my entire group interview the two people, either in groups or individually.  In the end I was sure that I wanted to hire one person (most qualified) while the rest of the group wanted to other (best attitude).  In the end I went with the groups opinion and hired one of the best people that I have ever worked with.  This person was a solid contributor and eventually  went on to lead the group after I moved on.