> Sell me this pen
You don't need a new pen, sorry for wasting your time.
An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#22Pretty sure the most common answer to "When was the last time you used a pen?" is "I don't remember.". Then what?
My approach in that situation would be:
1. store info of the pen not being memorable (can use that later as per the transcript)
2. Ask for what typical activities they use a pen for. Then try and describe back to them why the pen is important based on those events. If they respond 'I don't really use a pen much'....well that might be a little harder :)
Overall an interesting transcript. I haven't studied sales much so not sure about the theory behind it all but the example seems very good. Though I'm sure there's other ways to succeed at the task without necessarily following the OP's principles exactly.
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#23Pretty sure the most common answer to "When was the last time you used a pen?" is "I don't remember.". Then what?
Right, the strategy is very depended on answers that the candidate is going to get and it is hard to see how to continue with less favorable answers:
* Q: Do you remember what kind of pen that was?
* A: Yes, it was my favorite pen that I got from my wife for our anniversary
* Q: Do you remember why you were using it to write?
* A: I signed a credit card receipt in Walmart.
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#24The page is not loading. 25 years ago, a response could be: you don't need a pen, you need a 3000 USD IBM-compatible PC! :-)
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#25That's a terrible answer and to be honest, I don't particularly believe this actually happened. I was once asked to sell a pen to an interviewer and the first thing I asked them about was their pen use. After that, I pointed to things on the pen and told them about the benefits of it and why it was a good choice. he stopped me and said he heard enough because I established need, and then translated real features of t…
I don't see the difference between your answer and his? Both asked about recent pen use, both responded based on that?
The original article is full of overly specific details that are typical of fabricated stories; he's not just talking to a hiring manager, he's talking to the CEO. The CEO wasn't just happy with his answer, he had to pick his jaw up off the floor, etc.
The commenter you're responding to gave a very typical template of how you're supposed to respond to the question (and how anyone who has any aptitude for sales would.) It's nothing special, and that's the point.
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#26That's a terrible answer and to be honest, I don't particularly believe this actually happened. I was once asked to sell a pen to an interviewer and the first thing I asked them about was their pen use. After that, I pointed to things on the pen and told them about the benefits of it and why it was a good choice. he stopped me and said he heard enough because I established need, and then translated real features of t…
On top of all of that, it's titled "The Best .. I've Ever Seen" and it's his own anecdote. That's up there with Trump's "I have the best brain." crap. Terrible.
>it's titled "The Best .. I've Ever Seen" and it's his own anecdote
Obviously "the best (his) ever seen" would be "his own anecdote". How else could it be?
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#27Pretty sure the most common answer to "When was the last time you used a pen?" is "I don't remember.". Then what?
The premise of the question is that a pen is ubiquitous and used all the time by everybody. You can trust that the interviewee already understands exactly what a pen is and does (as opposed to the company's niche Foo Widget -- in this way it's similar to the classic datastructure/algorithm coding question: no, you'd never actually be solving this exact problem in the job, but it's a level playing ground to see if you can display some qualities we expect to be correlated with things you need to do in the job). If that premise fails, you (as an interviewer) need to come up with another object that does meet the criteria (say, an iPhone).
But if the interviewer is trying to have an interviewee sell them a product they up front know they're not even mildly interested in buying (as is probably the case for most of the HN crowd, we'd probably never actually buy a pen - digital for almost everything, free pens from wherever for whatever might need writing), they're either cynically hiring for a boiler room operation or doing it wrong.
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#28> Actually. You know what? Just this week I shipped ten new boxes of these pens to Elon Musk’s office.
An example of sales people having no issue with casually slipping in outright lies?
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#29This is a limp answer, he seems to be selling another pen, not the one in his hands. After all, if it's really important what pen you use to sign contracts, why would the one on the desk suffice? Why not get a beautiful bimetal nib fountain pen with navy ink?
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#30That's a terrible answer and to be honest, I don't particularly believe this actually happened. I was once asked to sell a pen to an interviewer and the first thing I asked them about was their pen use. After that, I pointed to things on the pen and told them about the benefits of it and why it was a good choice. he stopped me and said he heard enough because I established need, and then translated real features of t…
On top of all of that, it's titled "The Best .. I've Ever Seen" and it's his own anecdote. That's up there with Trump's "I have the best brain." crap. Terrible.
The best part is 'CEO: (picks jaw up off floor)'
The script he gave isn't that spectacular, and, if this did actually happen, the CEO was probably impressed that he had rehearsed.
I assume this question is used like the fizz-buzz coding test, although perhaps the CEO didn't know this.