From: goykhman_a@apollo.hp.com (Alex Goykhman)
Subject: Re: Strange Interviewing question 
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 20:22:30 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <718662216snx@apusapus.demon.co.uk> tfj@apusapus.demon.co.uk (Trevor Jenkins) writes:
>
>In article <int559r.718495844@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au> int559r@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au writes:
>
>> Hi all.
>>         My girlfriend went to an interview recently for a receptionist
>> position in a (small) printing/publishing firm, and the interviewer
>> asked her:
>> 
>>    "If I offered you any job in the world, provided that it would not be
>> a receptionist or secretary, what job would you prefer?"
>> 
>>         The question excluded the job offered, so what was she really
>> trying to ask?
>
>Those of us who interview prospective candidates have very odd reasons for
>asking questions. I'm a software engineer but my boss is a (ture-blue)
>manager during interviews she hates it when I ask the candidate "How do YOU
>debug a program?" As my boss cannot program she thinks that there is a
>corret answer to the question and no matter how many times I've tried to
>explain my reasons behind asking the question she still hates it when I do.
>
>What I have found odd is that in the five or six years that I've been
>involved in interviews and the 100s of interviews that I've given I've
>never gotten a student with a computer science or computing degree to give
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>me a sensible answer; the only person who did give me a good answer was a 
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>physicist and she got the job.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>My rationale for asking the question is wide spread. It checks out the
>applicatants ability to figure out what the real question is; for me to
>appraise how they react when asked odd questions; I'd also like to know HOW
>they work; I'm also fishing for how good their practical skills are (or is
>the first class honours degree merely a reflection upon the quality of
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>their teachers) and lastly it gives me a chance to wind-up my boss. :-)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    I think the rationale behind your question is quite simple: you have 
    difficulty producing a clean piece of design/code, hence you tend to 
    over-emphasize the importance of one's debugging skills.  Also, you
    seem to be pre-disposed against applicants with C.S. degrees (do you
    have one yourself?), as well as those with "first class honours"
    (feeling insecure?).

    You are lucky that your boss does not understand what kind of people
    you recommend to hire.  If she did, you'd be interviewing for a job
    yourself.

>
>Your girlfriend may have meet someone with as strange an interviewing style
>as me; it is also possible that she just meet an incompetent interviewer.
>
>By the way, "how do you debug a program" is the ONLY question that I'll ask
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>in an interview that I base my hiring recommedation upon. You can guage how
>well I think you are doing by the timing of the question: if it is near the
>beginning then you've lost already; in the middle I sense something and am
>probing for more; if it is toward the end then you've onto scoring a home
>run and this is the last pitch of the game.








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Disclaimer: all opinions are mine.
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