When my daughter made the cut for an in person interview for a full ride scholarship we obviously went into interview mode and tried prepping for every possible question. What they wanted to evaluate was leadership and communication skills so the university created a series of group problem solving challenges from building items to problem solving within a made up language to have the students work on together. There was 1 graduate student for each 2 scholarship candidates with clipboards and a matrix of things to look for. All of these poor kids returned to where the parents were waiting (we were invited/expected to attend) looking just shell shocked! In hindsite, I wonder if parents were being evaluated too.
In other words, you are selecting for instant answers that are at least plausible to the listener, rather than properly researched correct answers. Granted, that may be a desired characteristic of some jobs, but not necessarily all.
In general, the interview process does put a premium on relatively quick answers (which must be at least plausible, though not necessarily correct unless it is a kind of skill test with a specific answer) and a discount on the ability to research and find answers that are not immediately known. For some jobs, that may be what is desired, but for other jobs, that may be the opposite of what is desired.
I don’t believe I have ever worked in a field where these silly questions would be relevant. At least, I cannot imagine how they would be relevant. Frankly, I don’t understand what weird questions have to do with whether or not a candidate could do a job. I am pretty intelligent & hard working … not sure how such questions would flesh that out.
Two jobs ago, I took a test before I was offered a job. The test asked a lot of questions, in different ways, to try to assess my work style. Another section asked math & logic questions, which were relevant for the position. That test made sense to me. Questions about fruit and the like would leave me scratching my head. I assume I wouldn’t be a good fit for such an organization … if the point is to screen out those who think inane questions are a waste of time, it would work in my case.
And now it’s time for me to go out & yell at some kids to get off my grass.
UCB, you misunderstand me.
There is AMPLE opportunity to answer the kind of detailed, research oriented questions. Asking a new hire about their thesis topic, the type of primary sources used, what obstacles he or she faced. Asking about a challenging class- what was hard, how did he/she get up the learning curve, and which topics used to be baffling- but are now easy to understand- and why. On the job experience- how did he/she manage problems. Technical knowledge-- describe a recent project-- did you do the actual regressions-- or were you just responsible for eyeballing the results that someone else on the team cranked?
You are misconstruing what I said. No big company makes hiring decisions on the basis of these puzzle type questions. But it rounds out a picture of a candidates strengths- and asks in a way that makes it hard to be rehearsed and packaged.
There are lots of learning styles and personalities required to make the enterprise run. Some roles favor quick response. Some roles favor lengthy research and contemplation. No single style is good or bad- but I’m sure you’ve worked with people who are just not a good fit with the demands of their job.
I had a surgical procedure recently and asked the doctor how he knew he wanted to be a surgeon. He replied that his favorite activity growing up was video games. He realized that he was an adrenaline junkie, and thrived on quick response/quick feedback situations. He was bored out of his mind for most of medical school and thought he’d made a mistake until he discovered the OR.
This is a guy who can stand on his feet for ten hours at a time without getting tired. His reflexes and his dexterity and his endurance are what he’s most proud of. Can you imagine him as a gerontologist? (my parents gerontologist could sit silently for ten minutes and wait for a response to a question). He’d be the worlds least empathetic psychiatrist. A close friend is a radiologist- frankly, something of a klutz. Cannot imagine her with a scalpel in her hand, but she sits in front of a computer screen and stares with meticulous concentration for hours on end without losing focus. All of these folks go to med school, but not every med student is suited for every specialty.
Why is it so hard to appreciate that the skills that make for a good forensic accountant are not the same skills that make a good head of labor relations? And surely you know people who have made career moves in their 40’s, realizing that they have a total mismatch between what they enjoy and what they are doing? That miserable forensic accountant-boy, that’s sad.
In my 30 years of corporate hiring I try to head off those mismatch’s at the git-go.
One of my good friends who’s a director for Software Development at a Biotech company likes to use this one as a screening question to see if a programmer can come up with a (should be easy) coding solution to solve the problem in 15 minutes. I’ve stolen this question myself and modified it a little over the years, but the original question goes like this:
A farmer buys 100 animals for $100. The animals include at least one cow, one pig and one chicken, but no other kind of animals. If a cow costs $10, a pig costs $3, and a chicken costs $.50, how may of each did he buy?
Note that the tricky part of this is that there is more than one answer, so straightforward algebra doesn’t quite solve things. This is a simple looping construct using brute force methods to find all the combos.
@ProfessorPlum168 Unless you are buying fractions of animals, there is only one solution (5 cows, 1 pig and 94 chickens). No coding required.
oops, sorry, it was 300 and $300. Haven’t used this question in a while…
A farmer buys 300 animals for $300. The animals include at least one cow, one pig and one chicken, but no other kind of animals. If a cow costs $10, a pig costs $3, and a chicken costs $.50, how may of each did he buy?
You can still find all the solutions using straightforward math.
Yeah but it’s a coding exercise not a math exercise. But it helps obviously to understand how to derive the answer, that’s what software development is about.
Ack! Bad math flashbacks, especially after following the link to the quiz. Keep repeating to self: you is kind, you is smart, you is important.
*The Help
That is not too different from the first of the three Posse interviews. Since the founder of Posse is also the inventor of “the Lego Test” and a McArthur Genius Award winner, I would think that this system has had more thought put into it than the “what tree would you be?” type questions.
PS. My answer will ALWAYS be “a Larch”.
Lol, that totally made me laugh out loud! Thanks @stradmom!!
Excuse my idiocy but why is that the only answer? If it’s just $100 for at least one of each animal it seems there is a bunch of answers that work- 2 cows, 10 pigs, and 100 chickens is also $100, and is what popped in my head when reading it. What am I missing?
@milgymfam In the original post on it, it said the farmer bought 100 animals.
2 cows, 10 pigs, 100 chickens is more than 100 animals total. 
Here is my non-coder solution (my last coding experience was with Fortran - ? I am older than dirt!) Two equations, three variables… need 3 equations if there is only one solution.
So the solution is to keep substituting an integer for the number of one of the animals. Makes sense to start with cows… fewer iterations (can’t have more than 10 cows for sure!)
Fix the # of cows at 1, solve for:
$10 + $3x + $.5y = $100 (ditch the $)
1 + X + y = 100
No go, fractional answers. So keep going… fix cows at 2 ($20), solve for 98 total chickens and pigs, and so on… both x and y are integers, of course, so keep discarding the answers where they are not.
Totally misread it. Ha!
“A farmer buys 300 animals for $300. The animals include at least one cow, one pig and one chicken, but no other kind of animals. If a cow costs $10, a pig costs $3, and a chicken costs $.50, how may of each did he buy?”
It’s easy to see that cows must be a multiple of 5 for pigs and chickens to be integers. So the solutions are 5C, 41P, 254Ch and 10C, 22P, 268Ch and 15C, 3P, 282Ch.
This thread is causing me to break out in a cold sweat!
Here are two questions that people asked for a while at my previous job. This is for mechanical engineering interviews. A surprisingly high percentage of people struggled with them. The first does not really need any engineering training, but the second might.
If you are in a boat on a pond and you drop the anchor in the water, does the water level on the shore go up or down?
Why does a dragster have wide tires?
I was a college English major who never took a single physics course and I can’t imagine struggling with the first question. It just seems like common sense. The second I would take a stab at based not on formal science but what I know about driving a car on snow. Whether I got it right intuitively or not I’m sure I wouldn’t get the job, nor would I be capable of doing it!