Good questions to ask interviewees to find out if they are good problem solvers.

[neo_mao]

I'm going to be interviewing candidates and I need people who are good problem-solvers.

I'd figure I'd start by asking the candidates:

"Are you a good problem-solver?"

But not sure where to go after that.

Subject matter is not necessarily that important, just want to figure out how they think through problems.

Any assistance with questions would be greatly appreciated. Preferably questions that will not result in litigation.



PS: Problem-solving skills are paramount...but being anal is also a plus...

 

[ginoscope]

Whenever I have had to interview people and I wanted to know how they think I would just describe a situation to them and see what they would do. Project X is behind and you are one of the leads what do you do? Project X is nearing completion and you notice a potential issue that could delay it what do you do?

 

[Cylotron]

start off with a particular topic/question you'd like to "figure out"... then go blabbering off about some b.s. thing(like video games) for about 10 minutes. Afterwards, go back to the original topic & see if they have an answer yet.

 

[Lastblade]

In my last interview, the guy asked me a final and unexpected question. He wanted me to give an example where I have to explain or teach a complex problem to someone who has no clue. I thought it was an excellent question as I do have to boil down large amount of information into one or two slide for upper management.

 

[FilthyRear]

"Top or bottom?"

 

[mjmjr25]

Ask them to tell you:

A time they solved a problem their boss was struggling with.
A time they made a suggestion that didn't work out.
What's more important: saving time or saving money (when they tell you it depends; ask them what it would depend on)

I use all 3 of these questions. The last question is often something that changes my opinion of them (for better or worse). You'll get a chance to watch them think through something on the spot and something they don't have a canned response for.

 

[Renmauzo]

Ask them to tell you:

A time they solved a problem their boss was struggling with.
A time they made a suggestion that didn't work out.
What's more important: saving time or saving money (when they tell you it depends; ask them what it would depend on)

I use all 3 of these questions. The last question is often something that changes my opinion of them (for better or worse). You'll get a chance to watch them think through something on the spot and something they don't have a canned response for.

This is a great system. I always find it amusing when a candidate tries to give the answer they think you want to hear. That last question is a great one though, because the 'saving time vs. money' dilemma really shows the understanding (or not) of the mechanics of business, and it's always interesting how people make the connection between the two...if they can, although, they would've been screened out by this point if they couldn't...generally.

 

[LoneSage]

You see a tortoise in the desert flipped on its back, the sun baking its belly, its legs flailing hopelessly trying to turn itself over. What do you do?

 

[Jibbajaba]

What weighs more, a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?

I'm a scientist, and one interview question I once heard (didn't get asked it, just heard about it) is "if you had a trillion water molecules, how much water would that be, roughly?" If the interviewee asked for further clarification of what is being asked, the follow-up is just something like "Would it be like a drop of water, or maybe a cup, or a bucket, or a whole swimming pool, or something else?" If you've taken freshman chemistry (or just high school chemistry, really), you have the tools needed to sort of roughly describe what that would be, but aren't really taught to think about things that way. So it's just a critical thinking exercise.

 

[Fritz]

"If you had a totally sweet home cart collection would you sell it off like a fucking bonehead or store them away and let dat investment mature."

Edit: Yea that water question made me pause for a moment jibs. It has been 14+ years since I took organic chemistry. A good follow-up question to yours is what falls at a faster rate in a vacuum a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks.

 

[LoneSage]

There are 1.67.sextillion molecules in a drop.of water.

 

[mjmjr25]

Ask them to figure out what ssia means.

 

[Opethian]

Ask them to figure out what ssia means.

 

[norton9478]

You see a tortoise in the desert flipped on its back, the sun baking its belly, its legs flailing hopelessly trying to turn itself over. What do you do?

That question makes my eye twitch.

 

[Vectorman0]

Ask a Fermi problem. You can use it to evaluate their style of thinking and how they deal with a challenging/unusual problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

 

[Jibbajaba]

Ask a Fermi problem. You can use it to evaluate their style of thinking and how they deal with a challenging/unusual problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

Cool, I'd never actually heard of that. I wonder if there's a book of Fermi problems. That would be good toilet reading.

It's also kind of what my question was. 1 mole of water has 6.022x10^23 molecules (Avogadro's number). 1 mol weighs about 18 grams. 18 grams of water is 18 milliliters of water. 1 trillion is 1.0x10^12, which is about 11 orders of magnitude less than a mole (disregarding the 6.022 since this is just an approximation), so the volume is 11 orders of magnitude less than 18 milliliters. 18 mL is 1.8x10^-3 liters, so 1 trillion molecules of water is about 1.8x10^-14 liters, which you can't even see. You probably learn what you need to know to solve that problem in the first week of chemistry class.

 

[snes_collector]

A more general one could be to describe a task/project they had to complete with sufficient direction or guidelines, and how they completed it.

 

[xelement5x]

One example of a Fermi question I was asked when I was interviewing out of college is "How many gas stations are in your hometown?" It was a fun example and when I got back to the internet I looked up the actual stats and sent them to the guy I talked with to show him I was close.

A neat book I read back then was How would you move Mt. Fuji (https://www.amazon.com/How-Would-Move-Mount-Fuji/dp/0316778494)

It uses a lot of these analytical problems, but personally I normally try to get a better feel for how they approach problems. Mainly I ask for examples in their past positions about times they thought they were screwed on a project and how did they recover/move forward. Also, since I'm a developer I like to ask if they have a specific app/tool on their machine that they couldn't do without.

 

[sylvie]

so your friend thought he was a hot shot and now he's overdosing on heroin laying on your kitchen floor, about to tap out forever. what are the worst last words he could hear?

 

[GohanX]

"I'm your kids' real dad."

 

[NeoSneth]

You cant really see their real performance from an interview. I spend most of the time trying to figure out if they are a normal person or not.
I can usually teach the rest, but I don't want to teach someone that's just weird.

I've had someone try to ask me these questions in an interview,and they were just poorly written.
"What do you do when you need to learn something but you have no resources?" I do nothing. You said no resources, that means no books, no internet, no people....Stupid question. Next question.

 

[ebinsugewa]

generally open-ended questions like 'what happens when you type google.com into a browser and hit enter' (insert relevant similar question for your field here) are good

it gets them to talk at length and gives them a fair chance to relate it to whatever discipline they have the most experience with. you can talk about DNS, L2 routing, keyboard interrupts, etc. the google one is such a common interview question that it's probably likely to have been studied for so that's probably not a good example anymore to be fair but you get my point

 

[aha2940]

You see a tortoise in the desert flipped on its back, the sun baking its belly, its legs flailing hopelessly trying to turn itself over. What do you do?

What's a tortoise?

 

[FilthyRear]

so your friend thought he was a hot shot and now he's overdosing on heroin laying on your kitchen floor, about to tap out forever. what are the worst last words he could hear?

Allahu Ackbar

 

[Garlic Butter]

"it is the end of the month and your estranged partner is demanding months overdue child support payments, you can just about afford to pay the backlog but you chance upon a drastically undervalued copy of Metal Slug X from a repultiable seller who has been out of the neo scene for a few years. What do you do?"

That'll weed the chaff out.