
The Only Interview Question That Matters - engassa
http://www.inc.com/lou-adler/best-interview-question-ever.html
======
tptacek
I see how this one interview question is expansive and sets up a line of
followup questions.

I don't see why it's a good question. Presume you get an good answer to the
question and every followup question. Now tell me this: how much more do you
know about how capable the candidate is of doing the job you're hiring for?
And, were these questions the fastest, _most accurate_ way of learning that?

I submit: no. "What were the biggest challenges you faced"? How do I assess
the answer to that question? How do I compare it with answers from other
candidates? How do I track, over time, which challenges correlate to strong
performance in the actual role we're hiring for? "Explain your manager's style
and whether you liked it"? Come on.

Don't virtually all of these questions ask me to read tea leaves, to get a
sense of whether I "like" or "respect" the candidate? That's not the same
thing as learning whether the candidate will do a good job.

Oh, and good luck hiring anyone right out of college this way.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'd also argue that my answer to this question won't actually help you hire
me. My biggest accomplishment: I opened the door for [list of people] who then
walked through it. It's useless information if you want to hire me - I'm a
statistician ("data scientist"), not a guidance counselor.

(Of course, in a real interview I'd have a good answer for what you wanted to
hear. I'm just saying that an honest answer would be useless.)

It also biases you against people with many small accomplishments as opposed
to one grand one. But people who can handle 20 different small tasks on a
schedule are also valuable. Your organization probably needs more of them than
me (I'm the one big thing sort of person).

~~~
tptacek
Yes. This is what I'm trying to say about the difference between a candidate's
narrative and a candidate's capabilities.

When you think about it, the fact that we almost universally hire candidates
based on their narratives sounds fucking insane.

------
peacemaker
As a senior guy who's been programming a long time, I honestly don't know what
I'd pick in answer to this question. Partly because I've done loads of cool
(and no so cool) things over the years and partly because I don't have the
best memory in the world.

How do you decide which past accomplishment is worthy of a 30 minute
conversation? Usually what comes to mind when asked this question are simply
the most recent things I've worked on. If you've had the misfortune of doing
crappy work for the last few months then it makes it a bit harder.

I've seen lots of these kinds of posts, trying to "solve" interviewing. It's a
topic close to me right now as I'm in the middle of the interview cycle
myself. I just don't think it can be solved. There are too many variables and
too many non-scientific aspects to it. Most of the time interviews are decided
in that first impression with your interviewer - it feels like a primal
instinct people have about other people.

One thing I can say though, is that you aren't going to find the perfect
candidate with just one question.

~~~
tootie
I've been a pro for nearly 15 years and the project that I'm most proud of was
something i did as an undergrad. Now I'm sad.

~~~
FigBug
Yup, me too. And it's the worst code I've ever written. Miranda IM. Millions
of downloads, popular for 14 years. I got bigger than I ever imagined it
could.

What have I worked on since: ACDZip, ACDSee, Tracktion, EAW Resolution, SPIN
Review. ACDSee was a brief success, but the rest - meh.

~~~
czep
At least your failed projects have names, mine never even got that far! But
seriously, how should you answer the question if the honest answer is
something you did 10+ years ago? I could talk about that project all day long,
but I can sense a "What have you done for me lately" reaction if all I have to
hang my hat on is something that happened when Bill Clinton was President!

------
pg
"What single project or task would you consider your most significant
accomplishment in your career to date?"

If this is the best question you can ask people, we got really lucky, because
this is the essential question on all YC's application forms for events (e.g.
Startup School) and has been one of the core questions on the YC application
since the beginning.

~~~
dominotw
This is problematic and discriminatory. I hope this doesn't become a trend.

What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third
world who against all odds went to college. Is smart and motivated and could
be a great asset to your company but never had the exposure to great ideas.

You can argue that she can just say 'Going to college was my most significant
achievement' but are you in a position to rationally consider that as a
'significant achievement ' ?

In a age if great socio economic inequality very few people at the top of the
society get to have ' significant accomplishment', it is more of an indicator
of you socio economic status than your actual capabilities.

~~~
pg
_What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third
world who against all odds went to college?_

That is exactly the sort of achievement that impresses us, actually. For
example, Qasar Younis started life in a house with dirt floors in a village in
Pakistan. His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7. He appears to
have worked his ass off from the moment they landed. We funded his startup,
Talkbin, in Winter 2011, mainly because we were so impressed with him. Talkbin
was acquired by Google soon after Demo Day, and he is now a part time partner
at YC.

(Why do so many people assume that after 9 years of picking founders, we still
have huge blind spots that are obvious to them but not to us?)

~~~
dominotw
> His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7.

This is not an example of someone who is from the third world or from a
ghetto. Immigrant parents have strong work ethic which they instill in their
kids ( I belong to the club, so I know).

I am talking about girls from southside Chicago whose idea of 'achievement' is
not getting pregnant by 15.

~~~
rmason
Detroit went from the best big city school system in 1950 to the worst today.

[http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-
schools/michigan/d...](http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-
schools/michigan/districts/detroit-public-schools)

Anyone who doesn't think excelling in that environment isn't a highly
significant achievement is sadly mistaken.

~~~
hughdbrown
Too many negatives. I think you mean, "Anyone who thinks excelling in that
environment isn't a highly significant achievement is sadly mistaken." Even
then, I'd go for something clearer like, "Excelling in that environment is a
high achievement."

------
jxf
This is a pretty linkbaity oversimplification. It's designed to appeal to the
belief that there's a "magic bullet" for everything.

Hiring people via interviews is hard, because evaluating people with limited
time and context is hard. There's no such thing as a question that will tell
you everything.

If you're really trying to get an accurate picture of a candidate, conduct an
accurate simulation. Get away from interviews as the only means of evaluating
someone, and use something that more closely approximates the actual
conditions under which they'll be working.

Maybe that's a probationary period where you pay them at contractor rates, or
maybe you pay them to make a bugfix to an open-source project that you depend
on, or whatever. Asking questions can tell you a lot about how a person thinks
and works, but it's never a substitute for the real thing.

~~~
AaronBBrown
I read this a lot here about probationary or trial periods and I agree that
it's a great idea, in principle. However, the reality of the developer and
system engineer ecosystem right now is that it's an employee's market. Good
people are already employed and probably get a couple job leads every day via
professional contacts, LinkedIn, or other channels. Those people aren't going
to be willing to jump through these kinds of hoops, quit their day job, or
generally want to deal with putting this much effort into an uncertain outcome
when there are so many lower friction and equally rewarding positions. I
realize that I'm generalizing and that you may be able to come up with a few
anecdotes to make your point, but no one I know would deal with this. This
might be a great way of hiring college interns or people trying to break into
the technology field, but not practical for hiring established or senior
positions.

I like your idea about contributing to some open source project (paid), though
even in that case, you will likely run into qualified people who are unwilling
(or legally unable) to do this and as an interviewer, you need to be careful
not to exclude those individuals.

~~~
danielweber
Not everyone lives in a top 5 city where there are multiple job offers coming
in every day.

I used to think "what a big hassle" about those companies that would make you
work a contract basis at first. But after several months of thought, I
realized, "hey, if I were to suddenly lose my job, it would _dramatically_
reduce my life-stress if I knew there were a few companies out there that the
unemployed could excel at apply for, and that would provide me some income
while I was looking for jobs."

~~~
AaronBBrown
For reference, I live in a small town along the Hudson River on the edge of
the Adirondack Mountains in upstate NY, but have worked for Boston and NYC
startups for some time now. So, not living near a top 5 city doesn't really
have any bearing on the conversation.

I agree that long-term contract-to-hire is a reasonable way to go for may
employers and employees, particularly folks that already are already
contractors, but the premise of "you've got a couple weeks to prove yourself"
is a non-starter. I'm not going to quit my day job and risk my family's
financial security for a company that is unwilling to take a similar risk on
me. In an ideal world, it is the best way to evaluate a candidate. However, if
it were practical, it would have already become an industry practice. The fact
that it seems to be rare indicates to me that it does not work very well.

As a Systems Engineer, a practice that I would like to see more of (and may
try to implement at the company I work for) is a brief troubleshooting
exercise with a shared tmux session. Set up a server with some problem and ask
the candidate to identify the issue and try to resolve it.

------
kabdib
I've been in the industry for 35 years now (and hacking computers before
that). If I picked just one accomplishment, I'd have to choose just one from
all the accomplishments that I'm equally proud of. Furthermore, if I chose one
from earlier in my career, one which was really neat and a lot of fun and
technically sweet and saved the project's bacon, you might think I'd not done
much interesting stuff since then.

If you ask this, you're not going to get much actual data. You won't see me
write code, you won't see me react to something totally new.

I might ask this during a screening interview, but it's a soft question that
should lead into more concrete technical assessments.

So: Meh. No silver bullet.

------
rdl
I strongly prefer the Aaron Patzer/"Israeli Airport" technique; walk through
someone's entire resume and ask detailed questions (like this one) for each
job; and try to get education and non-work projects captured as well (which
really should have been highlighted by the candidate, too, but aren't always).
You could actually just go purely chronologically from "earliest memory", but
obviously focus on the important areas, and be aware an older candidate might
have changed substantially from college-age to present day.

Then, work-sample. Although in some cases (screening lots of people), a simple
work-sample just as a pre-filter might make sense, particularly if you can
administer it remotely/auto-grade/etc.

The hiring process has twin goals: not pissing off candidates (hired OR
unhired), and hiring the best people you can. Being time-efficient for
candidates as well as your own staff helps a lot. Painlessly getting people in
or out of the pool before a 6h interview process = win.

Having a repeatable, quantitative process also seems very important, although
the cases where I had to hire >3 people with a team of >10 all came with
someone else's HR process so I couldn't implement too much of this.

------
rrggrr
Recruiter here: I totally disagree. The only interview question that matters
is "What do you want to do?" A candidate's technical fit for a position is
secondary to their interest in doing the work, all the work, the job entails.
I regularly see great technical candidates fail or underachieve because the
job never matched their core aspirations.

------
randallsquared
This will get you a successful candidate who can talk at length about
something they might have done. If talking is the bulk of the job,
congratulations. If the job involves actually doing something requiring some
skill, perhaps you should be testing for the skill, rather than ability to
tell a (possibly true!) story.

Surely everyone has worked with that person who is confident and charismatic,
who inspires confidence in everyone who hasn't (for example) read their code,
but who produces negative work every day on the job. When that person
eventually leaves (perhaps after spending months or years being shuffled
around to the places they can do the least harm by their peers), they will
have no problem finding a lucrative job elsewhere, because they are easy and
fun to talk to, and can go on for hours about the very important projects they
were on.

------
nawitus
So what should software engineers who are "merely" doing solid and great
programming on "average" and typical applications respond? It's not like
programmers can pick and choose difficult projects.

~~~
300bps
I think you have hit the nail on the head regarding the purpose of the
question. The question is used to find stars. That is, someone who is 50x more
productive than programmers:

 _" merely" doing solid and great programming on "average" and typical
applications_

~~~
matdes
that whole 10x 50x bullshit is a myth.

~~~
300bps
You haven't met a true star then. I have been in IT for over 20 years and I've
seen a handful.

------
jballanc
Eh...forgive me for saying, but this is a bit of a cop-out. Especially where
the author notes that you then have to supplement this "one question" with 20
min of follow-up. It's essentially saying "the only interview question that
matters is having an interview".

I'm not saying that this doesn't work. I've been through my fair share of
interviews on both sides of the table, and focusing an interview on various
dimensions of a single project is a far, far better strategy than the typical
haphazard array of semi-related questions on people skills and technical
ability. Really, I think it's not even so important that you focus on the
"that you're most proud of" part. This tack would work just as well, I
suspect, with the interviewees second or third most notable accomplishment.
What's important is that it is a project of sufficient size that you _can_ ask
the follow-ups, and in doing so construct a consistent picture of the
candidate as an employee.

If you really want _one_ question to get the most information from someone, my
goto has always been:

"What is your current favorite language/framework/technology stack? What do
you hate about it?"

Ok, so technically that's two (or one two-part question), but I've found that
this question will very quickly reveal how able someone is to think critically
and to assess all facets of the decisions that they make.

~~~
danielweber
Sounds like "Pick some job from your resume, and let's talk about it." Which
is pretty effective.

------
throaway9091
It's all a nice way of saying:

Employer: "How low can I pay you, and how many hours will you work?"

Candidate: "I can't compete with the H1B slaves."

Employer: "Oh, okay. Then let me give you a tricky whiteboard question and
reject you based on that, so you don't sue me."

~~~
smsm42
I've never seen pay discussed in hitech at the same place as technical
competency - and never before such competency is asserted. It is pretty stupid
to bargain about something if you have not even a slightest idea how valuable
it is. Of course, interviewing for some job where only headcount matters is
different.

------
b0rsuk
This question is like a Django model definition where you have a database
query as default (or limit_choices_to) value. It makes it impossible to
perform the 'syncdb' command (create a database from scratch, for tests etc).
In other words, IT CREATES A CHICKEN&EGG problem.

There are people with good potential, who will never be able to answer this
question, because they were never given a chance. I was unemployed for 3
years, and I used to work in a completely different industry. The job was much
like assembly line, and I couldn't even change my computer's time&date without
admin's approval. Opportunities for achievements were extremely limited.

So, maaaybe this is a good question, for the _employer_. But considering the
fact employers are complaining about lack of qualified workforce at the same
time as LOTS of people are unemployed, I think not! Today, if you ask this
question, you're limiting yourself more than you think. It's similar to HR
managers who ask for X years of experience in Y. Spending 4 years in your 3rd
grade is not an achievement, and I seriously doubt the interviewer would be
able to tell the difference.

------
jessriedel
Not sure if the reasoning is the same, but I always thought academics should
be judged by their few very best ideas. Applying for your first postdoc:
What's your best idea? Assistant prof: what are your two best papers? Tenure
decision: what are your 5 best papers?

Everyone likes to churn out a list of triple digit publications, but 99% of
those will have no discernible impact on the world.

------
Jare
How about: "Let me tell you about a few of my accomplishments and then I'd
love to hear which one you think is most significant for the kind of work I'd
do in your organization"

Interviews go both ways.

~~~
lyndonh
Absolutely.

These articles are always aimed at the candidate. Where are the articles about
"The most important question the interviewer has to be able to answer" ?

e.g. How are (you/the guy who's going to manage me) going to enable me to do
great things here ?

What's the most (important project/major change), that was proposed by someone
in this kind of position, that has gone into production ?

If I do this job well, where do _you_ expect _me_ to be in 5 years time ?

------
rubiquity
The Only Interview Question Followed By 18 Other Questions That Matter

------
fit2rule
I don't agree with this sentiment .. I think this is a very shallow approach
to evaluating people on the basis of their past accomplishments, and also
somewhat presumptuous to consider that they might 'outdo' their past
accomplishments just by working for you. Therefore in my opinon the most
important interview question to ask is this:

"Do you want to work here?"

.. followed up by:

"Why do you want to work here?"

If the answers to these two questions don't jive with what you need/want as an
employer, then there are no further questions to ask.

------
URSpider94
I'm going to add a top-level reply, despite having replied to a few people's
posts.

The first question is just a staging question. You are asking the candidate to
think about a situation that you are proud of, one you will be happy talking
about, and one that you hopefully remember in detail.

The real meat is in all of the follow-ups -- what's called "behavioral
interviewing". You're asking people to tell you about how they behaved in a
real situation. For example, when there was a huge disagreement on the
project, how did you solve it? How did you motive the team through a low
point? Tell me about big decisions that you made that worked out, and ones
that didn't.

Research has shown time and time again that good behavioral interviewing is
the best way to find successful employees. If it's a technical position, you
clearly also need to discern their technical skills (code on the board, or
submit a github resume, or the like), but these are the questions that will
tell you if this is someone who will be an asset to the team in non-technical
ways.

------
coldcode
Odd I go to the page and there is no content. I guess it doesn't matter...

~~~
aw3c2
It requires you to enable Javascript because it is a broken website. Oddly
enough there is pretty much no content then anyways. ;)

The question is "What single project or task would you consider your most
significant accomplishment in your career to date?"

Big whoop!

------
yason
Despite what people say, I think that any interviewing comes down to your gut
feeling if you're any good at interviewing at all. There's no single set of
questions that you can use to filter in the best or filter out the worst,
except maybe the fizzbuzz like things in case you have to filter out people
who actually can't code. So this question presents a nice background for
talking about something that allows you to ask endless questions about it and
go deeper and deeper as long as you have time.

I generally like this sort of approach as people will "fold" eventually if
pressed hard enough, i.e. they have to admit that they don't know something or
they'll try to act like they do. And the goal of an interview is not just
reach to point where people "fold" but the path travelled before reaching that
point.

------
sytelus
I've asked this question few time and honestly it's no where close to "the one
question" author makes out to be. Lot of candidates drifts on to something
very complex, or describe other people's work as theirs, or make up stuff as
they go. Plus it totally fails on campus hiring, one-man projects that evolves
slowly over time and has legal risk of candidate disclosing sensitive
information.

The best interview question, IMO, is still the one that Sergey Brin used to
ask: "Describe to me something that I already don't know".

------
bowlofpetunias
I'm 46 years old. You want me to pick _one_?

I mean, I get it, I use this question regularly as an interviewer, but if you
have me on the other side of the table, you're giving me a lot of room to tell
you exactly the story you want to hear... Especially if you pull this question
out of the bag late in the process, when I you've already given me enough
insight in what would impress you.

Like most interview tactics, it's very context sensitive. There is no silver
bullet for interviews, and certainly not only one question that matters.

~~~
smsm42
"I can't pick one but here's couple of recent cases that may be interesting
for you" is a perfectly valid answer, IMHO.

------
kotakota
I think this an amazing question to ask in an interview and I have actually
been asked this question in two interviews. I generally throw the interviewers
off track though because I generally talk about my personal project that
involves a virtual machine and a byte code compiler for the virtual machine. I
actually really enjoy this part of the interview too because it gives me a
chance to talk about something im passionate about while displaying my
technical abilities.

------
Tycho
Cool. I always ask this question. Sometimes I even tell candidates 'and now,
my favourite question.' It's not for a pure developer role though, it might
not work well for that. It a chance for people to show how they've actually
used the skills they claim to have, and whether they'll bring some invention
and creativity to their role.

------
arbuge
It's a useful insight given his experience although more hard data backing up
the claim would have been useful. A better title would have been something
along the lines of how that's a great interview _opener_ though. As the
article goes on to elaborate, you need to follow up with many other questions
after that first one.

------
Zigurd
It's a good open-ended question that would bring the interviewee to the item
on their resume that's actually the most indicative of their potential. This
is a good tool for focusing the interview. The follow-up questions are OK, but
for interviewing a coder I'd rather talk about a significant sample of their
code.

------
DonPellegrino
Good article, terrible link-baity title.

------
yololasaurus
This is a great question (or leading question anyway) especially if you tell
candidates ahead of time that you'll be asking them this question and setting
where it leads. The best interviews I've done have always allowed the
candidate (or me) to prepare.

------
geophile
This? This is the wisdom has has to convey after 36 years of experience? It is
just the most obvious thing. I've been asking this question for as long as
I've been interviewing, (adjusted as necessary, for kids just out of college,
for example).

~~~
eruditely
If you take enough people over articles obviousness space something will be
obvious to everyone.

------
rocky1138
Can you do the job?

~~~
herge
Can you define the job?

~~~
madlynormal
Yes. Please have 5+ years experience with Javascript ES6 specification.

~~~
smsm42
That's not a job. Unless, of course, some is giving out money for just having
experience with Javascript - in which case please tell me who so I can apply
and get a nice income supplement while spending no time doing anything. Not
holding my breath though.

------
Bahamut
I don't like this question - I do a lot of things, answering this question
doesn't say a lot about me. It gives a vastly incomplete picture of me. I
would say that it is one of those bad generic questions.

~~~
eli
It's hard to talk about a lot of things in an interview so the question
focuses on one thing... that you get to pick.

Agree that this post has a terrible title and making a hire/no hire on one
question is insane, but it's a good question.

~~~
Bahamut
I disagree - these are the same types of questions you might see on a college
application. As far as my experience goes, it's a question that has massive
flaws, especially when you deal with people who has an impressive & flexible
set of skills/strengths - it selects against some of the very best, since for
them, it's difficult to say what is the most significant accomplishment since
many accomplishments manifest as significant in different ways. To select one
is to likely avoid talk on the others, and to make a snap judgment call on the
implicit question of what is significant, which may end up with a flawed
answer that the interviewee may not make normally.

That is why I fundamentally disagree with such a question being important for
hiring. If you want to test how someone handles pressure, that can be
manifested in other ways. If you want someone to discuss their
accomplishments, a simple request for the person to describe some of his/her
accomplishments would be less flawed (i.e. "Tell me a little about yourself
and what you have done") - it would also be less confrontational.

~~~
robbiea
Why would you want to be less confrontational in an interview? The point is to
see if the candidate is good or not, not "let's see how I can ask this
question in the nicest way possible so I can get a nice and safe response that
the candidate will just read off his / her resume".

The fact is this question weeds out people who truly havent' done anything
difficult or unable to communicate their achievements properly. If you have an
impressive set of skill / strength, then it should be easy enough for you to
pick one.

In my mind the question forces the candidate to show the interviewer his /
her:

1) Communication skills (i.e, is this person going to tell me all their
problems, or just the one major problem that he/she needs help with)

2) What they view as an accomplishment or challenge

3) How they handle challenges

4) Their ambition (i.e, did they take a leadership position in their
accomplishment or did they sit back and let everyone lead the project)

~~~
Bahamut
And you easily identify communication skills without such a flawed question
for the reason I have detailed.

If I were asked this type of question, it would be a huge red flag to me, and
potentially a deal breaker due to signaling that the interviewer has not put
enough thought into his/her questions. I would be able to answer the question
just fine, and it would not reflect poorly on me, but to me, it reflects
poorly on the interview process since you are highly unlikely to have a
wholesome picture of the candidate when more useful approaches to get more
knowledge are pretty clear, and is fraught with the same flaws you see in many
typical processes today that are not meant to find optimal candidates.

~~~
robbiea
Could you clarify what your interview process is to get a wholesome picture of
a candidate in a 30 minute interview? That would help me understand what your
viewpoint is.

------
mrfusion
I'll have a couple good accomplishments on the job every year but nothing
jumps out at me as the biggest accomplishment of my life.

How should I answer? Just pick out a recent one I guess.

Does anyone else have this problem?

------
pthreads
This is the most idiotic advice for hiring. I have seen many successful hires
who were just out of school but were brilliant and went to become very
successful later on in their careers.

------
SavvyGuard
We need a rule on hacker news. If you submit another "this is how you do
interviews" article, it needs to be backed up with testing and facts.

------
elchief
Recruiters are can shuddup, in the same way that old-school baseball scouts
can shuddup.

Show us the stats. Do your own Project Oxygen if you don't have the stats.

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mrcactu5
what if they haven't done their "big thing" yet?

What constitutes a "significant accomplishment" anyway?

* building an awesome web site ? * raising a child ? * graduating college ? * overcoming cancer ? * learning to play the piano?

I do agree you will get to know somebody _very quickly_ if you ask these kinds
of question. I am 30 and I will review them in my time.

------
001sky
_The Only Interview Question That Matters (inc.com)_

Hmm. I guess if you don't count the the next #19 questions?

