
Ask HN: What are your favorite interview questions? - zherbert
I&#x27;ve interviewed at a bunch of startups recently, and overall I&#x27;ve been unimpressed by the interview questions.<p>Many of you have hired for both technical and nontechnical roles - how do you approach the interview? Do you have a set of questions that you ask every candidate? Or do you just wing it?<p>What are your favorite questions?<p>I haven&#x27;t found many resources online for interviewers. I&#x27;m thinking about putting together a handbook that includes great sets of questions and advice about hiring based on potential, from this awesome HBR article https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;21st-century-talent-spotting.
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bopf
I have hired hundreds of people throughout my career - both for startups
hiring employee number 2 and also for big corporates. Also, I am normally
hiring in Europe. Some of the stuff I mention below may be totally illegal in
the U.S.

The questions you ask differ a bit depending on where you are in the company
life cycle. As you mentioned interviewing for start ups above, let's focus on
that. When hiring employee number 2 to 10 I tend to focus on personality and
cultural fit. Instead of the typical job interview, I tend to take long
lunches, dinners and walks with the people to find out if we would get along.
After all, in a startup you tend to spend more time with your co-workers than
with your spouse. So hiring at this stage is more like dating. Of course I ask
about their past but some common questions I am interest in are:

\- why do you want to join a startup? What is your main goal? This is to find
out if they have hopes for lots of stock options and to make it big or if they
have been frustrated in their old job for not being able to make decisions.
Money focus usually is fine but they need at least one more key motivation as
most startups will hit a rough patch where money becomes tight. If they join
because they want to have big influence, only hire them if you are willing to
give up control.

\- are you willing to work very long hours and give up weekends if needed? How
does your family life fit into this and how will you make sure that your
family life does not suffer and in return impact your work performance.

\- I tend to throw in a random question to test their problem solving skills
like "how many bakeries are in New York". Even though I find these kind of
questions pretty common, they throw of most people. If they answer too fast,
you know they have faced this kind of question before and you can ignore the
answer. If they stall and look at you like you are crazy, then the answer is
important. I tend to give them one or two hints and then just watch how they
attempt to solve the problem.

\- lastly, depending on the role I hire for, I give them some real life
examples and ask them to provide answers. For a coder this will be a coding
test for a sales guy I will describe a difficult sales situation etc.

hope this helps :)

~~~
zherbert
Thanks so much for the in-depth response! One of my best interviews was over
coffee with 2 startup founders, so I agree that can be more effective than a
typical job interview.

Have you ever hired someone who was great in the interview and on paper but
didn't work out? Any idea why?

~~~
trcollinson
Two thoughts. First, if your startup requires people to give up nights and
weekends and you need to ask potential candidates how they will mitigate that
situation with their family life, then you need to rethink how your business
and software development run. Work life balance is exceptionally important and
should not be ruined for the sake of building a business. I realize you didn't
bring up the question about giving up nights and weekends. But since the
poster above you did, I thought it important that I bring up that requirements
like that are absolutely absurd. If you regularly take away peoples personal
time for your business, rethink how you run a business.

Second, on to your question. I have hired quite a lot of people and
occasionally they are amazing in interviews and on paper and don't work out in
real world situations. Over time you get better at spotting these people but
it is a risk you take. As with many things, interviewing is a skill and some
people are quite good at it. Often times it is not a technical or job skill
mismatch, it is a personality or a team fit match. That can take weeks or
months to uncover. The best thing to do is to have a clear exit strategy for
each person you bring in if they don't seem to work out.

------
soham
When you're small (startup), hiring is a reflection of founders' values. When
you grow big, it's a reflection of your company's values.

First hence, be clear about what your values are. It's not easy to figure
those out. You have to interview several candidates and introspect after each
interview, to narrow down on what you want. It's a bit unfair to first few
candidates, but overall it works out better. Once you arrive at a nugget of
values you can cohesively describe, you design your interview process and
questions based on what you've arrived at.

Also realize that you cannot design direct questions to probe for values you
want. You have to demonstrate that value yourself first and see if they get
excited with it. e.g. if one of your values is transparency, you can't ask
"are you transparent in your interaction with people"? You have to tell them
some things about your company or the role that they are not expecting you to
disclose and see if they value that.

If coming up with core values is too hard or too vague for you, then start
with these three: Curiosity, Humility and Hard work. You won't go wrong with
these. Most high performing people demonstrate these values.

In order to probe for these values, you can ask pretty much any reasonable
question, and then pick up on cues. e.g. if it's a programmer interview, you
can ask them a difficult coding question/assignment based on their background.
Then see, if they ask good questions (curiosity)? Do they test their code
(humility)? Do they give up, or continue to push through (hard work)? Don't
expect precise answers to your question, but look for these signals.

When picking questions, you should prefer questions that are "peeling the
onion" type questions. i.e. start with a simple question, let them answer it
and then add constraints. Keep adding constraints/twisting until they are able
to answer it. That will give you great insights into how they think and how
they value.

Hope this helps.

[About me: Founder of
[http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com). I've
interviewed an obscene number of people in my career. Have been in the valley
for a number of years. I have to think about this for a living]

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alain94040
I use a mix of asking about what's on your resume (chronological works nicely,
so I understand why you switched jobs and how your skills evolved) and a set
of standard technical questions (so I can compare candidates over time). I'll
usually dig deeper technically until you give up. Giving up doesn't mean
failing, on the contrary.

~~~
zherbert
Do you ever try to assess traits like motivation or curiosity? Do you allow
those to just come out in regular conversation? Or do you just stick to the
resume walkthroughs and technical questions?

~~~
alain94040
Motivation and curiosity should come through naturually when the candidate
discusses their past experience.

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viraptor
Regarding the actual questions, I just like to talk about the actual CV /
past. There's got to be something exciting in their previous job. Or outside
of job. Or during studies. If there isn't... depends if you look for someone
with creative solutions, or you're ok with average coder to type out standard
CRUD.

Otherwise, I really like small tasks without limits. For python job it was
something like "read csv, write to database". It can be a 3-liner and take 10
minutes. But if you say "no limits, make it production quality code", there's
so much you can learn about the candidate.

It can have error reporting. It can have documentation. It can be a proper
module. It can handle encoding issues correctly. It can care about SQL
injection or not. It can have configurable paths and backends. It can support
py2/py3/both.

~~~
zherbert
Do you try to look for specific nontechnical traits, like determination? Or do
you just let that stuff come up naturally during conversation?

~~~
viraptor
I was mostly involved in technical interviews. But for the non-technical stuff
- yes, it usually comes up during conversations about previous jobs. Why they
left / what they achieved / what they wanted to achieve / etc.

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JSeymourATL
> What are your favorite questions?

I like to probe for curiosity.

Q: You've read the position summary, company profile, and met with other
members of the team. What questions do you have now? What more would you like
to know about us?

On this subject of questions, Andrew Sobel has a good read>
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13510967-power-
questions-...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13510967-power-questions---
build-relationships-win-new-business-and-influence-ot)

------
kzisme
I haven't interviewed anyone before, but I have been interviewed.

At my current place of employment - during my interview I got asked a series
of brain teasers and puzzles and had to work them out on the whiteboard. It
was interesting and fun and I didn't expect it at all, but it did make me
think a lot.

~~~
zherbert
Same with my current place of employment. Do they also ask any kind of
behavioral or fit questions? Was there anything you thought the interview was
lacking?

~~~
kzisme
Actually, I took an online personality test of sorts as well. I'm fairly
certain their reasoning behind it is to find level headed people (or at least
find people that could potentially work well together).

I didn't think it was lacking much - it was enjoyable and I also got surprised
with some programming tasks(wasn't sure if that was going to happen or not).
For me, it was an OO question on "How would you design an elevator" just
talked through it and explained the different functions and functionality.

The puzzles were super laid back and were asked by another developer, so you
got to see his personality as well as the other people in the room
participated.

Awesome experience thus far.

------
Mimu
The questions you got probably come from a book just like the one you want to
write.

~~~
zherbert
Ha...it's true. I've just observed a lack of interviewing knowledge at a bunch
of startups, and am trying to figure out if it is a trend. In my experience
most startups nail the technical questions, but don't know what else to ask.
For example, I was recently asked "How do you stay organized?" as one of the
only questions that wasn't about my past job experience.

I think a great, brief handbook could go a long way.

