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Interview questions bombed or big bang

colporteur

Do you recall a question you were presented with during a job interview that you bombed (i.e. failed to answer)? Got a question you think would make a big bang interview question?

 

I thought with the level of experience the members of this site have, it might be a informative to share an experience or provide a question with an appropriate answer. I also like hearing stories.

 

**************

I was sitting an interview for a IT Security position. The question was “What is the Security Triad?” I drew a blank. I had never heard the term Triad. I had extensive computer experience but I was trying to get into IT Security.

 

Before I could respond an emergency vehicle passed the building, drowning out all sounds in the room. When I could be heard I said, “I think that was my ride. I’m about ready to die drawing a blank on such a simple question.”

The panel laughed and the interview proceeded.

 

Later ,I discovered I had the answer but I didn’t realize that was the question to match it.

**************

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  • I've been reflecting about this questions since I first saw you posted it. It's a bit tricky to know if I bombed an interview because I don't think the interviewer is going to tell me, at least bluntly. Most of the people I've been interviewed by have been polite people and polite people can usually be quiet long enough to complain about your answer to a colleague rather than the person being interviewed. This had never occurred to me until I was experienced enough in my career that I was asked to perform interviews and thusly experienced the shock of receiving, for lack of a better word, really bad answers to some of the questions I was asking. I mean, I've gotten some really bad answers where the person was completely sincere. One example comes to mind where I was interviewing for a hardware development position. In this interview I brought an oscilloscope and a function generator, pretty standard models, and I asked the candidates to hook up the function generator to the oscilloscope, generate a 5 kHz square wave, and display it on the oscilloscope without using the auto-set function. This particular candidate's response was, "that's what technicians are for", and when I explained we were a small company and didn't necessarily have enough work for a full-time technician he still refused to complete the request, all with a smile on his face. Not a smirk or a smug smile either, more of a proud smile, as if he had given the correct answer.

     

    So, after complaining to my colleague after the interview, because I was a polite interviewer, I had to ask myself what kind of bad answers I might also be giving. I'm not sure I've figured out the answer yet.

  • in reply to michaelwylie

    I've seen that smile before, unfortunately, after they were hired.

     

    -Sean

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