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Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

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Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#11

Post by mistercow »

asgard1024 wrote: post #8

I have long suspected this to be true. That's my argument against mandatory voting, because if people can choose not to vote, they can express they don't know and hopefully leave the result on people who feel they do know. However, it's a bit unclear how this ties together with Dunning-Kruger effect (which is also used as an argument against democracy). The D-K effect would suggest that if you allow people to express…

I'd actually be pretty surprised if the Dunning-Kruger effect applied significantly to politics. There are so many tribal pressures involved that I think that the phenomena involved with Dunning-Kruger would be overwhelmed.

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#12

Post by ape4 »

triplesec wrote: post #2

Corollary: "There's no such thing as a stupid question", because you're not afraid to be wrong. All creative and innovative people are like this, without exception, IMO. As Richard Feynman said in the title of an autobiography: "What do you care what other people think?" Everybody wins when people leave their egos behind.

Sure. But its not so hard to come up with a question that sounds pretty stupid. What is Monday? Can I eat your shoe for lunch? Why do you have to interview me before hiring me?

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#13

Post by mistercow »

beat wrote: post #10

One of my best technical interviews was from a lead engineer who simply asked more and more difficult questions until he found your limit (believe me, he knew more than anyone he would interview). His interest wasn't in what you knew so much as how you reacted when you hit the limits of your knowledge. There's a lot of value in that approach. I don't use it myself when interviewing people, but I do try to accomplish…

>believe me, he knew more than anyone he would interview

He wouldn't really need to. By asking questions about very domain-specific knowledge, he could still achieve the same effect with anyone who didn't have a freakishly similar set of expertise.

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#14

Post by forktheif »

asgard1024 wrote: post #8

I have long suspected this to be true. That's my argument against mandatory voting, because if people can choose not to vote, they can express they don't know and hopefully leave the result on people who feel they do know. However, it's a bit unclear how this ties together with Dunning-Kruger effect (which is also used as an argument against democracy). The D-K effect would suggest that if you allow people to express…

You can have mandatory voting with a "none of the above" option on the ballot.

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#15

Post by asgard1024 »

mistercow wrote: post #11
asgard1024 wrote: post #8

I have long suspected this to be true. That's my argument against mandatory voting, because if people can choose not to vote, they can express they don't know and hopefully leave the result on people who feel they do know. However, it's a bit unclear how this ties together with Dunning-Kruger effect (which is also used as an argument against democracy). The D-K effect would suggest that if you allow people to express…

I'd actually be pretty surprised if the Dunning-Kruger effect applied significantly to politics. There are so many tribal pressures involved that I think that the phenomena involved with Dunning-Kruger would be overwhelmed.

In representative democracy, probably yes. But D-K effect is commonly used as an argument against (semi)direct democracy.

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#16

Post by asgard1024 »

forktheif wrote: post #14
asgard1024 wrote: post #8

I have long suspected this to be true. That's my argument against mandatory voting, because if people can choose not to vote, they can express they don't know and hopefully leave the result on people who feel they do know. However, it's a bit unclear how this ties together with Dunning-Kruger effect (which is also used as an argument against democracy). The D-K effect would suggest that if you allow people to express…

You can have mandatory voting with a "none of the above" option on the ballot.

And the point of such a system is? To spend more money and time of everyone?

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#18

Post by anonymfus »

asgard1024 wrote: post #16
forktheif wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have mandatory voting with a "none of the above" option on the ballot.

And the point of such a system is? To spend more money and time of everyone?

When "none of the above" wins, it usually means new elections where all old candidates are banned or some other procedure to resolve complete distrust to current politicians.

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#19

Post by elq »

croddin wrote: post #3

When reading the title, I assumed this was talking about job interviews, a much different type of interview. How do these ideas apply to job interviews? Is it a good idea for an interviewer in a job interview to encourage interviewees to say I don't know, and should you be more ok with saying I don't know and then elaborating in a job interview?

A perfectly acceptable answer to me is "I don't know, but this is what I would do to find out", go on to describe what books you'd refer to, what google searches, etc.

Re: Encouraging interviewees to say “I don’t know” improves performance

#20

Post by jfarmer »

croddin wrote: post #3

When reading the title, I assumed this was talking about job interviews, a much different type of interview. How do these ideas apply to job interviews? Is it a good idea for an interviewer in a job interview to encourage interviewees to say I don't know, and should you be more ok with saying I don't know and then elaborating in a job interview?

Those are two separate questions, IMO. In the context of a job interview, however, I believe giving the interviewee permission to say "I don't know" makes the interview go better because they'll spend more time focusing on the interview and less time trying to figure out "what the interviewer wants."

I usually give a little preamble telling them to feel comfortable blurting out nonsense. I'd rather have them blurt out nonsense than sit there for 30 seconds in silence because they're afraid to say something stupid.

You can see the interviewee relax almost immediately.

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