SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the boss-wants-to-see-how-you-handle-pressure? dept.
I recently applied for a job in Silicon Valley.
The recruiter had me take a battery of tests that measured my verbal, mathematical and visual aptitude. I'd guess it was a mini-IQ test; it wasn't a mini-MMPI. As a result of the tests I was invited to interview onsite.
At the end of the interview the manager declared that he wanted me to take some tests.
His tests were brain teasers he had downloaded from a random website. The brain teasers had nothing to do with the work I was interviewing for. He seemed to ignore the battery of sophisticated tests I had been subjected to, and to believe that he could do better.
What is the REAL purpose of using brain teasers during an employment interview?
Is it just to make the candidate feel stupid? Are any of these people qualified to interpret the results? Are any of them industrial psychologists? Or is this all about power and control?
Please advise.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday October 05 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)
The whiteboard/audience thing is a non-starter for many, including many of the best. A typical workflow is to learn what the problem is, mull it over for a bit (sometimes days), then it all comes together leading to the code being pounded out in a couple hours and debugged and tested in a couple more hours. At that point, I can explain it quite well though I tend not to use diagrams to do it.
Naturally, for simple tasks, the above workflow runs much quicker, but would still result in an awkward people watching me sit and think with the sensation of my neck being breathed down.
Use the whiteboard test and you'll select for people who will crank out a sub-optimal pre-mature design that more or less works today but breaks tomorrow.
If you want to see if the candidate can explain something, have them explain a solution they have already done. However, be aware that they may not be able to explain every detail for non-disclosure reasons if you insist on something they have solved as part of their previous employment.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:12AM
This seems to be a two-minutes' hate thread for people with no social skills. Look, when somebody throws a brain-teaser at you, you respond quickly with something stupid if you don't have something smart to say. Seriously, it's okay to look like a fucking idiot there, just do it quickly and with a smile on your face.
I'd wear heavier fucking shoes. See how easy that was? That's an actual example I was asked during an interview.