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Ask HN: Do programming interviewers use first question to disarm candidates?

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Ask HN: Do programming interviewers use first question to disarm candidates?

#1

Post by omidh28 »

It might sound silly but in the last few days that I was searching for a job I noticed that I have been asked some strange questions which did not make sense at least to me and because it happened in a few of them I started to think it might be a pattern or some kind of technique.

For example one of them asked my "How can you print number 4 without using numbers or strings?" Turns out the answer was "Make array of 4 elements and print its length!

Just the other day I was shown a JSON file with a few objects then the interviewer asked me "How would you put this object into a mongoDB document"? The answer was that I should use the 'builder' pattern to do it.

Then I thought maybe those questions are being asked for other purposes than technical reasons or maybe I'm just hallucinating, Something like this ever happened to you?

Re: Ask HN: Do programming interviewers use first question to disarm candidates?

#2

Post by PaulHoule »

If I were interested in breaking somebody's defenses gently I'd ask questions in the following order: (1) What do you think about the immediate environment? (2) Tell me about what you're passionate about (3) What were you like when you were a kid?

Personally I would always ask type (2) questions because they usually put people at ease but also they give people many opportunities to self-destruct and show bad character.

Re: Ask HN: Do programming interviewers use first question to disarm candidates?

#3

Post by [deleted] »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If I were interested in breaking somebody's defenses gently I'd ask questions in the following order: (1) What do you think about the immediate environment? (2) Tell me about what you're passionate about (3) What were you like when you were a kid? Personally I would always ask type (2) questions because they usually put people at ease but also they give people many opportunities to self-destruct and show bad characte…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do programming interviewers use first question to disarm candidates?

#4

Post by eesmith »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If I were interested in breaking somebody's defenses gently I'd ask questions in the following order: (1) What do you think about the immediate environment? (2) Tell me about what you're passionate about (3) What were you like when you were a kid? Personally I would always ask type (2) questions because they usually put people at ease but also they give people many opportunities to self-destruct and show bad characte…

Consider "I'm passionate about my kids. This weekend we're going ... ". Or "I was the shy one of the kids at the kibbutz."

Or are you looking for "I'm a real nerd. I love programming in my free time. When I was a kid, I was a real Trekker."

Bear in mind that, in the US, letting non-job-related information influence your judgement may be a violation of the Civil Rights Act. And looking for people with a history and background you easily relate to might make you more likely to overlook even more competent people from other backgrounds.

Or are you really instead looking for people who have read up on how to prepare for interviews, and therefore have an answer for this already planned, and one which conveniently happens to match the job position?

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