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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

#31

Post by TheChineseGirl »

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?

Without encouragement, candidates answer with "I don't know" during a job interview easily stands out. If we are interviewing for a position, aren't we searching for just ONE outstanding specific individual? Should we really explicitly encourage?

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

#32

Post by TheChineseGirl »

Spoom wrote: post #27

I've found that the ease with which someone answers "I don't know" has a positive correlation with their wisdom in general. (Of course, if they answer "I don't know" to everything, they probably just don't care, and that's a separate problem.)

I second this notion.

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

#33

Post by RokStdy »

patrickyeon wrote: post #25

Some commenters, and possibly the author, want this advice to extend to job interviews, but the reason an interviewer is pushing you to answer a question isn't that they want you to be right or wrong. A good interviewer wants to get a look into how you think and how you approach a problem. An even better interviewer will make that clear, by telling you "there's no trick here", "I don't know the answer myself, let's s…

Asking somebody for the worst possible solution seems like a really clever ice-breaker. I'm stealing that technique! Thanks patrickyeon!

I interviewed some folks a while ago for a simple desktop support position and I had a lot of trouble getting anything out of the candidates. It's possible that they were all just terrible, but I'm guessing it was more probably my approach.

I gave them a very simple test[1], and I was met with sort of deer-in-headlights stares. Hence forth I think I'll start with a problem and an example horrible solution.

[1]Presented the applicant with a screenshot from a desktop computer that couldn't connect to the internet. The screenshot showed several possible indicators (impossible network settings, cable unplugged, etc...).

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

#34

Post by tootie »

lmkg wrote: post #24

I think part of this conditioning from taking tests in school. For twelve or more years of your life, in any situation where you are asked to demonstrate your knowledge, a null response is treated in the same negative fashion as an incorrect response, and getting outside help is disallowed. No wonder we try and guess, we've literally been trained for years that it's the best approach! Compounding that, an interview i…

Actually, the SAT (American college entrance exam) penalizes wrong answers more than non-answers. A non-answer gets you no points, but a wrong answer gets points subtracted.

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

#35

Post by IanCal »

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…

> Dunning-Kruger effect (which is also used as an argument against democracy)

Democracy isn't about having an efficient system, it's about having a stable system. Democracy is an awful way of getting things done, it's just a reasonably good way of stopping very bad things from happening.

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

#36

Post by ufmace »

Being comfortable with saying "I don't know" a lot is something I had to kind of train myself to do. It's part of realizing that this is a truly enormous field that we're in, and nobody could possibly know more than a fraction of it. Anyone who doesn't say it much is either spending all of their time in a subset of the field that they know very well, or is throwing around bullshit, either from fear or bravado.

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

#37

Post by IanCal »

asgard1024 wrote: post #29
wisty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia, citizens have a duty to pay taxes, defend their country (if required to do so), serve on a jury (if their name is drawn), and vote. That's the cost of living in a democracy. If voting was compulsory, only lunatics would vote. I wouldn't voluntarily pay taxes, sign up to fight a war, or serve on a jury either - I'm not crazy; but I think it's important that these things get done.

Hm, thinking about it, maybe I was wrong. Maybe you can actually express "I don't care" vote in the mandatory voting system as well, by voting for a randomly selected candidate (and these contribution will average out to same votes for all candidates). But it's rather impractical compared to simple non-mandatory voting.

What about the difference between "I want X, but there's no way they're getting in, so I won't bother" and "I don't want any of them"?

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

#38

Post by j_baker »

tootie wrote: post #34
lmkg wrote: post #24

I think part of this conditioning from taking tests in school. For twelve or more years of your life, in any situation where you are asked to demonstrate your knowledge, a null response is treated in the same negative fashion as an incorrect response, and getting outside help is disallowed. No wonder we try and guess, we've literally been trained for years that it's the best approach! Compounding that, an interview i…

Actually, the SAT (American college entrance exam) penalizes wrong answers more than non-answers. A non-answer gets you no points, but a wrong answer gets points subtracted.

The SAT is the exception rather than the rule. Most standardized and non-standardized tests reward you for guessing.

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

#39

Post by iyulaev »

tootie wrote: post #34
lmkg wrote: post #24

I think part of this conditioning from taking tests in school. For twelve or more years of your life, in any situation where you are asked to demonstrate your knowledge, a null response is treated in the same negative fashion as an incorrect response, and getting outside help is disallowed. No wonder we try and guess, we've literally been trained for years that it's the best approach! Compounding that, an interview i…

Actually, the SAT (American college entrance exam) penalizes wrong answers more than non-answers. A non-answer gets you no points, but a wrong answer gets points subtracted.

Barely. IIRC it's 0 points if blank, -0.25 if wrong, so if you eliminate 1 choice it's worth it to guess. I'd like to see it be -5 points if wrong, since this is more reflective of the real world. When I entered the industry as an electrical engineer this was a difficult transition for me. In school, you're incentivized to guess and BS. But in the real world, the penalty for being wrong is HUGE.

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

#40

Post by j_baker »

patrickyeon wrote: post #25

Some commenters, and possibly the author, want this advice to extend to job interviews, but the reason an interviewer is pushing you to answer a question isn't that they want you to be right or wrong. A good interviewer wants to get a look into how you think and how you approach a problem. An even better interviewer will make that clear, by telling you "there's no trick here", "I don't know the answer myself, let's s…

> A good interviewer wants to get a look into how you think and how you approach a problem.

I consider that a red flag. In this case, the interviewer is almost certainly less concerned with whether or not you can do the job than they are concerned with whether you think like them.

Though I do like your suggestion to try offering a terrible solution to get the conversation started. Usually it's breaking the ice that's difficult.

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