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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

#41

Post by jlgreco »

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…

> "And I do mean worst."

I am not convinced that throwing INTERCAL at a candidate is a good way to roll. ;)

But seriously, I think that you are spot-on with this approach. Interviewing, done effectively, is about getting a fleshed out idea of the capabilities of the candidate, not just getting correct answers. Perhaps the best response to give or expect, when the interview gets stuck, is "I don't know, but..." Even on questions that aren't coding questions, these are often good responses: "I don't know, but [this is how I would find out]" or "I don't know, but [this is a topic or problem that I believe is related]" .

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

#42

Post by bcbrown »

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?

My view is that if an interviewer dings me for saying "I don't know", that's a sign I wouldn't want to work there anyway.

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

#43

Post by bluecalm »

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?

One argument is to stop efforts to disfranchise voters. If voting is mandatory things like photo ID law in US won't fly (or at least would be much less effective). It also affect who politicians pander to. These days common strategy is to pander to radicals because it's easier to get them to vote. That would disappear if everybody has to vote.

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

#44

Post by nether »

IanCal wrote: post #35
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.

Favorite quotation from Kelly Johnson, former head of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works:

> Voting on everything prevents anything very stupid from happening, but also anything very brilliant.

You can guess who called the shots in his aircraft design teams. He did, because he was truly fucking brilliant.

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

#45

Post by wwweston »

iyulaev wrote: post #39
tootie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> in the real world, the penalty for being wrong is HUGE

In some situations (committing an integrated circuit design to manufacture probably being one), the cost of being wrong is pretty big.

Other situations where there's a tight feedback loop and you can make/propagate changes quickly (say, most web app software development), it's less so.

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

#46

Post by acdha »

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…

That's a great technique and one which I particularly like because it also tends to be more representative of the real job: you almost always want to work with the person who says “Slow down, let's make sure we understand this…” when handed a hasty spec and proposed solution

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

#47

Post by mathattack »

j_baker wrote: post #38
tootie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The GMAT as well. It's interesting when you work with little kids - you have to encourage them to guess. They're more likely to admit what they don't know.

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

#48

Post by mathattack »

The answers may get better, but don't you want to find out which candidates are more likely to bluff when they're wrong? The point of the interview isn't for candidates to give you answers that are as correct as possible. If this were the case, you'd mail them a list of questions, and ask them to get back to you in a week. One goal of interviews is to find out how people behave when they don't know. This is why I try to take people to the end of their knowledge, no matter where that end is.

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

#49

Post by lambdaphage »

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…

My graduate advisor is Spanish, but is faculty at a university in the States. In his first year of teaching, he penalized for incorrect answers (as is apparently the Spanish custom). But his students threw fits during office hours, so he caved in the face of potentially terrible teaching evaluations.

After tenure, he said, things will be going right back to the way they were in the old country.

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

#50

Post by jaggederest »

jlgreco wrote: post #41
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…

> "And I do mean worst." I am not convinced that throwing INTERCAL at a candidate is a good way to roll. ;) But seriously, I think that you are spot-on with this approach. Interviewing, done effectively, is about getting a fleshed out idea of the capabilities of the candidate, not just getting correct answers. Perhaps the best response to give or expect, when the interview gets stuck, is "I don't know, but..." Even o…

For what it's worth, my 'worst solutions' always involve a guy with a van driving around hassling people in person. Somehow people never accept my proposed solution, so I haven't been able to test it.
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