
Best interview questions to spot ideal employees - wbharding
http://www.williambharding.com/blog/hiring/meta-analysis-best-interview-questions-to-spot-ideal-employees/
======
davnicwil
An interview should be a conversation, shaped to each individual. The aim is
to try to discover information about the person (and vice versa) gradually by
following threads of thought and argument in a properly developed context. The
style of conversation, and the specific subject matter, should differ between
individuals - it should be shaped to their context, and their responses should
be shaped to your context, for it to be a valuable use of everyone's time.

The moment you start to think in terms of 'sets of questions' or much worse
'best questions' to ask everyone and anyone who comes in for an interview,
you've failed as an interviewer, in my opinion. This just gets more true as
the questions become more generalised and abstract, which unfortunately they
will tend to in order to filter up into a set of 'standard' or 'best'
questions you'll find online. That's not to say you don't want topics or
themes or ideas of questions to steer the conversation towards, and of course
as with anything all the skill is in the delivery, but it's a fine line to
walk and certainly thinking of an interview in terms of getting through a list
of topics or questions is veering towards the wrong side of that line.

It's tempting to pull questions from these lists, and just rap them off,
because it's easy and you can convince yourself it's a good idea because a lot
of them exist on the internet, so there seems to be some consensus that this
is a good practice. I've done it myself in the past, and it was a mistake.
It's lazy, it gives awful results, neither side of the interview will have a
good experience or a genuine, valuable human interaction. It's not smart or a
hack, just bad interviewing.

------
pan69
These sort of interview question posts really get to me. It's all just a power
trip thing by mostly little people; "we're on this side of the table and
you're on that side and it's a great opportunity for us to feel good about
ourselves by asking you stupid and personal questions that makes us feel
really important, smart and insightful while you're sweating bullets".

Edit: My experience is that you never really know how people turn out.
Sometimes an interview can contribute to a hiring decision, but mostly not.
Just hire someone for a few weeks and see how they go, if you work great
together ask them to stay for another few months, etc.

~~~
HiLo
Lol these types of assumptions, that I have the luxury to just interview for
weeks on end, really get to me

------
invalidOrTaken
>"What will make you love coming to work here everyday?"

An important addendum should be: "Are you able to do quality work somewhere
you don't love?"

If your interview process filters for superhumans, _you won 't get
superhumans,_ you'll just get liars.

~~~
randycupertino
That's like those pre-hire personality tests. You just get the best liars.

------
throwaway_xx9
Reads more like a pub crawl companion evaluator than an employee interview
guide.

Employees don't have to be likeable - they have to be able to get the job
done.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _Employees don 't have to be likeable - they have to be able to get the job
> done._

I've seen places where that's the de-facto prevailing culture, and that's not
where you should spend most of your waking hours.

~~~
sudo-i
Amazon?

------
VLM
"Culture fit. Does their personality match the company’s values?"

Culture fit means demographic group membership, it has nothing to do with
values or whatever, but I'm sure they didn't want to open that can of worms.

------
human_error
> Focused. Can they possibly eschew Facebook, Twitter, IM, Hacker News, et al.
> for eight hours?

What does it have to with being focused? I take some short breaks and visit HN
and reddit to "empty" my mind and to have some fresh air not because I'm lazy
or unfocused.

------
stfu
> Focused. Can they possibly eschew Facebook, Twitter, IM, Hacker News, et al.
> for eight hours?

How about NO?

------
toothrot
I still want to know: How many dentists _are_ there in Poland?

~~~
TACIXAT
There are roughly 190k practicing dentists in the US [1]. There are
approximately 2.2 physicians per 1000 people in Poland and 2.5 physicians per
1000 people in the USA [2]. There are 38M people in Poland and 319M people in
the USA [3].

Starting with the same density, (190k / 319M) * 38M, we would get 22.5k
dentists in Poland. We know there are slightly fewer physicians per capita in
Poland though. So let's take 22.5k * (2.2 / 2.5) and we get roughly 20k
dentists in Poland.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentistry_in_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentistry_in_the_United_States)

2\.
[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS)

3\.
[https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_totl&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:POL:USA&ifdim=region&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false)

Edit: Off by a factor of 2. Darn!

~~~
KenoFischer
Actually I think it's just a difference in definitions. You were looking at
practicing dentists, while the number I quoted was licensed dentists. If I'm
interpreting the numbers correctly, there are only 13088 dentists actually
practicing dentistry (I don't speak polish, so I'm not sure if the difference
is explained in the report). I'm also not sure how the world bank data is
derived.

~~~
KenoFischer
And doing even more analysis, there were 87687 practicing doctors (not
including dentists) in Poland in 2014, i.e. 2.3 per capita, which is close
enough to that it could have been World Bank's data (which isn't available for
2014). Comparing those numbers to the US it just seems that Poland has a
smaller dentist/doctor ration than the US.

------
nickthemagicman
Is a team player essentially a person who schmoozes well?

------
russelluresti
> "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Okay, I'm done...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

