

Job Interview 2.0: With those stupid Riddles - bdfh42
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Job-Interview-20-Now-With-Riddles!.aspx

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byrneseyeview
It may just be a hacker thing, but isn't everyone taking these interviews way
too literally? They don't want someone who will always go for baroque when
presented with a problem; they want someone who is at least capable of finding
clever solutions.

It's a good proxy for IQ, which they can no longer legally test, but which
correlates very strongly with job performance in a variety of tasks.

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bdfh42
True - but too many of these problem tasks one hears about are so stupid that
it casts doubt on the technique. I would much rather be asked to tackle a real
world problem (in code or as a spoken exercise) Indeed, being asked to solve
silly riddles would persuade me to drop a job application. I would class such
things alongside graphology and lie detector tests as strong counter
indicators.

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byrneseyeview
They may want to standardize grading.

They may want to see how broadly you can apply information (e.g. if I were
asking someone a finance question, I would not ask them to talk about stock
options -- I'd ask them to talk about trading water rights, or valuing
nonsmoking sections in a restaurant).

