“ While apes can learn sign language and communicate using it, they have never attempted to learn new knowledge by asking humans or other apes. They don't seem to realize that other entities can know things they don't. It's a concept that separates mankind from apes”
This is something you see in reverse with toddlers, they think you know everything they do (or at least that's been my experience with my own kids) so if they saw something cool then they assume that you saw it too. My kids have gone through stages of assuming they now know everyhing, too. Fun.
> Even asking "what did you have for lunch" is better than asking nothing; the interviewer might start talking about whether the company pays for lunch, whether it's any good.
No, it's not. I'm pretty sure anyone who asked that in an interview would be bottom of the list, regardless of how I felt about their interview otherwise. It's flippant and shows a lack of care about what's going on.
Iv'e never been upset with someone for not asking questions. Interviews are tense and we do try to answer the most common questions before they are asked. If they have no questions, we extend and offer to email us later and we'll answer any questions they come up with later.
Stupid question affect the interview. Lack of questions doesn't.
Would be interesting to see data on this. I agree that asking what did you have for lunch is silly. That said, what sort of lunches do folks do around here is not.
I suspect some of this is born from the idea that you want to be remembered. Asking a question can help anchor your existence to the people that interviewed you. Again, though, I'm sceptical without data. Feels you could argue this either way.
Not to mention some interviewers, like myself, will just follow up and ask if you have any more questions. Someone asking what I had for lunch would just be seen as wasting time.
The meta point of the post is it's dumb to attach too much weight to cultural signifiers that are easy for people to imitate once they know about them.
The top voted comment on the post invents a new cultural signifier, and declares that candidates who fail it should be disqualified! It would be funny if it wasn't a pervasive interviewing practice.
Haha, wow. No sense of humor? As a hiring manager I’ve run somewhere north of a hundred interviews, and honestly they get so boring and repetitive. I love it when people have questions because it shows you something about them which wasn’t on the script.
If someone’s question was “what did you have for lunch?” and they asked with a smile, I would laugh out loud and then tell them about my lunch, and probably write something like “likeable candidate, has good people skills,” in my review.
It does depend on the context. If it was asked in the context of a casual conversation, say in between sessions -- it's ok.
But when I, the interviewer, am asking "do you have any questions for me?" during an interview, I invariably mean it in a professional context. Answering with "what did you have for lunch?" seems to cross the professionalism line somewhat (why the hell do you need to know what I ate?), and may not be appreciated by many. I wouldn't go as far as to outright dismiss the candidate's viability, but for me personally, it's comes across as weird and non-self-aware rather than funny.
(also, as someone who watches a lot of stand-up, I also have a high threshold for humor -- I'm kinda of a humor snob. I like light-heartedness, but contrived failed attempts at humor are grating to me because they often indicate someone's trying too hard. There's an inauthenticity there that rubs me the wrong way.)
So even if you're right, the trouble is an interviewee might not be able to tell a priori if they got someone like you or someone like me. So it's risky.
(otoh, "what are some good lunch spots around here, in your opinion?", mentioned by another commenter, is almost always positive and indicates a candidate's interest in the workplace environment)
Seems like you work in a different environment. Here, our interviews begin with a coffee walk or inviting them for lunch; and no one has the attitude of “why the hell do you need to know what I ate”).
My go to question is usually how does a code change go from my machine to production and I’ve noticed different people focus on different aspects. Recently I asked what can I do to help if I get hired and the interviewer actually gave me an honest answer about scalability and I realized I was grossly under qualified for the position. :(
My go to question used to be “what’s the best thing and then the worse thing about working here”, every time I used it I have got jobs I wasn’t good enough for but the feedback was that I was really motivated.
This stuff really does work, I don’t really need it now because i generally find roles through my network.
Does the "best thing or worst thing?" question work?
Is any interviewer really going to tell you the politics are awful, or managers are overbearing? They'll probably give a typical non-answer like "the food is so good you can't help but put on weight".
Candidates do this also when asked their worst traits - it doesn't work.
When I'm interviewing someone and they ask this, I try to answer honestly, although I think it's human nature to still try to put a positive spin on it because a) I work here and there's some element of post purchase rationalization, for want of a better term and b) if they're a good candidate I want to sell them on working with us.
However there are forces in the other direction - it's not in my interest to deceive a candidate into a role that doesn't fit them if they're going to leave when they inevitably find out, or if they're going to be demotivated as a result. I have a vested interest in this being a good fit from both sides.
I also want to give candidates a great experience - we're a small company and not many people have heard of us. Word of mouth is the most powerful recruitment tool we have, in many respects.
To some extent this only works because I genuinely love the place I work and so the bad things I talk about genuinely aren't that bad (I would call them tradeoffs rather than things everyone would consider super negative).
Oh it sounds like I do, but the issue is also the individual interviewer. You never know who you're going to get. Hence the importance of carrying oneself in interviews in ways that don't unnecessarily disadvantage oneself. Flippancy can go both ways and is not always appreciated.
You can already see from the comments on this thread that there are strong opinions on both sides of this -- it's not a consensus. Flippant questions are a gamble is all I'm saying.
p.s. that said, if it were me, I'd treat it as a minor irritation and move on unless the candidate demonstrates a pattern of a lack of seriousness about the interview. It's one thing to be relaxed and casual, but not taking the interview seriously is not a good look.
Also if a company is extremely casual and everyone is in jeans and hoodies, ignore what I said in this entire thread. It doesn't apply.
I'd like to think that most companies don't really test out the friction and experience of their hiring processes. A good company might have one or more interviewers that are not so good.
A good company absolutely tests the friction and experience of their hiring process. At my company we have an entire “candidate experience” team that works hard on measuring and evaluating it, and we take that feedback seriously. Occasionally we decide take people off the interview pool for a while and have them do more interview training if they want back on.
> As a hiring manager I’ve run somewhere north of a hundred interviews, and honestly they get so boring and repetitive. I love it when people have questions because it shows you something about them which wasn’t on the script.
As an engineer, I've run at least that many engineers. I don't like it when we go off script, because it's hard to compare with previous candidates.
However, candidate question time is for the candidate to gather information, not for me. It's best for everyone if a candidate gets the information they need to decide they'll dislike the job/environment during the interview rather than during the first week.
> I don't like it when we go off script, because it's hard to compare with previous candidates.
Wow. Meep, zorp, hire me. The beauty of this section of the interview (as someone who also has done countless of these numbing, repetitive 'script' interviews), that it allows for candidates to be tiny bit unrestrained. Go on, ask whatever you think is important. Or funny. Or something that can give you insight into this job you're tyna get into. That's the part where you can actually differentiate between robots who memorized answers (whatever answer they might be) and people who are actually interesting that YOU, and your team, would find pleasant to work with.
As an interviewer, I guess I just don’t get that at all.
Interviews are the opportunity to meet an interesting person, learn about them, talk about their interests, and sell them on the chance to work at your company.
Imagine your company has a multi-stage interview, your job is to do the whiteboard coding part, and your pool of known-to-be-of-equal-difficulty questions is very small.
You also know that, when people are thinking through a challenging problem in a stressful situation, they mostly won't want to engage in small talk at the same time. Although you can give them hints and ask questions at appropriate times.
It's easy enough to imagine how that could get tiresome, once you've done enough that no solution or mistake is new to you.
>Interviews are the opportunity to meet an interesting person, learn about them, talk about their interests, and sell them on the chance to work at your company.
And all of that is a great way to introduce a ton of unconscious bias into your interviewing process. You should be spending your time in the interview focusing on determining if the candidate meets the requirements to do the job. Being interesting, having interests you find interesting, etc. are presumably not requirements for the position you're interviewing them for. When you find out they have (or do not have) shared interests with you, as a human being, you're wired introduce bias into your decision making process, whether you intend to or not.
Interviews SHOULD be boring in the repetitive sense. The interview should be tailored to the position, and not the person you're interviewing.
This is a fair critique, but as sibling commenters pointed out, a well-structured interview is highly repetitive by design, so that every candidate for a particular role gets as close as possible to the same interview experience. When you’ve done dozens or hundreds of these it becomes kind of like mind-reading, you just know what the person is thinking and roughly what they’re going to say and do for the next 45 minutes based on what they do in the first 5. And yes, sometimes, that can get boring.
But your point is valid in the sense that, as an interviewer, I do try to bring energy and interest to each interview, both because it’s what the candidate deserves and it’s better for me too.
And to be clear, most interviews are interesting and enjoyable, even the sessions I’ve done a hundred times. But, just being realistic, neither I nor the candidates are always on our A game, and sometimes the result is a quiet and dull interview.
And to be clear, that may still result in an offer recommendation! Some of these interviews are dry because the candidate knows the material down pat, doesn’t want to chit chat, and has no questions. Those are, in fact, the very kind of person I imagine would improve their performance by smiling and asking what I had for lunch :)
Note to self: ask this question in every interview for the rest of my life, to make sure I don't end up working with someone who thinks that the "professionalism line" means not asking about something as normal as lunch...
I responded to another similar comment already but suffice it to say, noting that someone was charismatic is not going to land them the job unless charisma is a valuable skill for the specific job. When hiring engineers we allow a very wide range of “people skills,” because they aren’t critical so long as they’re above a critical threshold.
Not saying this is you necessarily, but your post makes me think of certain friends I’ve had over the years who are very introverted and can be very salty about extroverted and/or “charismatic” people. They tend to judge people who are friendly and outgoing as being vapid or shallow - thinking, I suppose, that if they were deep thinkers, they too would be quiet and not care about social niceties.
I think that’s a really dangerous mental trap to fall into. It is perfectly possible to be both brilliant and charismatic. It is also very possible to learn and improve “people skills,” just as you can learn anything else. Thinking otherwise can lead to badly underestimating or misunderstanding others, and limiting ones self.
I don't think that, I just think a) you have to be careful not to let the halo effect from them being charismatic bleed into your technical evaluation, and b) you seemed to be making a huge leap from a single question, not even adding a caveat about e.g. delivery, just thinking he's suddenly brilliant from a "clever" question he may not even have thought of himself.
> As a hiring manager I’ve run somewhere north of a hundred interviews, and honestly they get so boring and repetitive.
What an insane thing to say. As if on top of everything else, you also want us to entertain you? Does anybody really believe someone would laugh at that?
When I was reading that comment it seemed like a lighthearted question was a plus if it happened, but obviously not a serious metric that anyone is tracking.
I don't know why commenting and replying has to necessarily be so hostile and adversarial.
This response doesn't seem warranted. GP didn't say you're his monkey. He said the job gets boring. Candidates with good people skills get hired more often because they bring a little more joy to the workplace. And, all other things being equal, that decision makes perfect sense.
Just to make sure you see it I’m copying some things I wrote to other replies:
1. Charisma is a plus, but how much depends on the role, and for most roles it’s not going to matter.
2. To be clear, most interviews are interesting and enjoyable, even the sessions I’ve done a hundred times. But, just being realistic, neither I nor the candidates are always on our A game, and sometimes the result is a quiet and dull interview.
And to be clear, that may still result in an offer recommendation! Some of these interviews are dry because the candidate knows the material down pat, doesn’t want to chit chat, and has no questions. Those are, in fact, the very kind of person I imagine would improve their performance by smiling and asking what I had for lunch :)
I think maybe the question can work, depending on who does the asking and how charismatic they are, as in Mad Men when one guy tries doing what Don does and it doesn't work because he isn't Don https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP5Cd8i6Cb4
So maybe your good people skills, likeable candidate = "hey, charisma", which depending on what you're interviewing people for gets you those mythical guys who can't code.
I mean that last bit is a big jump. I don’t think any amount of charisma would help a candidate in the debrief if they did poorly on the technical segments. Where it can help is for more junior folks who have gaps, and what you’re trying to sniff out is how hard the person is going to work and how teachable they’ll be. Or, depending on the job, it may be a minor factor for someone applying to be a manager or work in HR, since the people skills are actually one of the important points of that job.
But if the most charismatic person out there interviews for an engineering job and can’t code, that debrief would take two seconds, and sound like, “Man, X sure was nice, too bad they can’t do the job.”
Ok, how do these people who can't code get in to jobs requiring coding then? If charisma doesn't do it what does?
on edit: assuming the people are not mythical, although I certainly have known people who could not code well enough to have it be worthwhile having them code, which is I guess a slightly different thing.
Coming at it with my hiring manager hat on, sometimes at the end of the day, you ask "do you have any questions for me?" and it's obvious that the candidate has really asked all the questions of people previous to them. In that way, saying something like "I can't think of anything more right now, all the other interviewers have been so open" or whatever. Plus it's usually pretty obvious the candidates are usually tired at this point.
Now at the beginning of the day, I'd expect some questions. But also, some interviewers simply don't leave enough time for this part of the interviewee, so it's really just going through the motions.
Now my best interview candidate hat on, the real thing is to ask questions while the interview is going on at relevant times. For example, when they ask you about testing, maybe ask, well what frameworks do you use to test? What's your code review process? Let's review it right now. Etc.
Asking stupid questions is definitely a red flag, although as long as they aren't offensive stupid questions, I usually give a pass. It's all a part of the experience, there are no hard and fast rules in hiring.
I don't necessarily agree, it's just the personality of one person, whom you might not even work with regularly depending on what their role is.
Sure, you might say that's a window into the rest of the company, and it's true in a way, but the HR person being slightly humourless does not always equal a bad job.
This of course depends on the context, and the 'lunch' question won't always work. For example, if you feel that your interviewer lacks any sense of humour, or is the type of person who would judge a lot questions as 'stoopid', it may be better to skip it (and for that matter, maybe also skip that job)
It won't work everywhere. However at my job it could be "I had steak" or "I grabbed sushi". A great follow-up question: what did it cost? 3.50 to $5.
This is an amazing perk to my job. I could even list ~5 other options that were available, and talk about the other 5 places to go which offer 20+ more options.
This leads into great, where did you eat? How common is it to socialize vs go back to your office?
This also helps in projecting an image that you have options and you're not desperate. And even if you are desperate, it's good to ask questions so you don't land in a bad situation. I think about some jobs I quit, and in retrospect I could have saved everyone some time if I had thought of certain things that were important to me and asked questions ahead of time.
While one should always prepare a question in such situation, the proposed standby questions are definitely worse than not asking a question. "What did you have for lunch" or "what did you do yesterday" are highly personal, and irrelevant to the interview.
It is a worse way of saying "I don't have a real question for you".
Work environment, atmosphere, infrastructures... There are endless relevant topics that an interviewee could ask about. Anything would be better than "what did you do yesterday".
For what it's worth I (OP) have been asking this question for a decade now and have gotten a good response, as well as fodder for follow ups. At least when I look back at the (few) times I have been rejected there were obvious other reasons that were _not_ this.
When you ask people what they value they talk in generalities like "good team communication is important to us," when you ask what they did yesterday you learn that feature development has stalled because everything is being rewritten in Clojure, or whatever, then you can follow up and ask about that.
> they asked "do you have any questions for us?" By this point I'd done so much preparation that I couldn't think of anything, and said "No."
I'd argue his preparation was inadequate. Part of my interview preparation process is to come up with a list of questions to ask based on the research I've done about the company and position.
OP here - this kinda feels like telling someone who missed a game winning shot that they should have made the shot. Had I included this in my preparation and gotten the scholarship I would not have written the blog post about how failure to prepare in one key way led to me not getting a scholarship.
In any case I've updated the wording to make my intent more clear.
Not exactly. I think a more apt analogy is a person who missed the game winning three point shot who only practiced inside shots. You'd want to tell the person they should probably round out their practice routine with outside shots as well.
Additional: Asking a question just for the sake of it, or for the sake of appearances, is what some idiot does at the end of a meeting, making it go on for another half an hour and wasting everyone presents time.
Since the comments have shifted focus to hiring/interviewing:
Make sure that your company's interview process leaves enough time at the end of each interview to allow the candidate to ask questions. Don't assume the candidate is OK with emailing questions later because you only left the candidate 3 minutes to talk. The candidate pledged a day of their life to interview as they are interested in your company. If they leave your company at the end of the day without being able to ask all the questions they have, there's a chance they will never bring them up later.
Please and thank you. After putting me through 3 phone screens and a technical interview or some "5 hour" (really 10 hour) take-home task, I sure as shit do not want to give you any more of my unpaid labor, even in the form of writing up my questions in an email, after a 5-hour onsite interview.
A lot of companies tend to forget interviews are two-way processes, it's as much about them getting to know you, and you getting to know them.
Especially in tech, where you often need to do take-home test; I've seen so many companies not giving feedback on that test. To the point where it seems irrelevant to even do it.
If I don't get feedback on a technical test, through email or a follow-up interview, it's instantly a red flag. The company didn't respect the time I put into it, and I don't see how it will become any better when actually working there.
> there's a chance they will never bring them up later
If by that you mean that they will look for another company instead, then I agree. That's what I always do. I am not explaining anything, I just simply ghost the companies who behave like that. I ALWAYS found a more caring company by doing this.
When I'm interviewing people, I usually don't consider the questions they ask (or don't) as part of the evaluation, and if they are nervous, I tell them so.
If you evaluate their questions, then they might not ask what they actually want to know, for fear they'll be judged for it. That helps no one.
While I agree you need to be careful about mistaking someones nervousness for lack of qualification for the job, that's going to be an issue throughout the interview, not just when they ask questions, and you need to work to get them comfortable throughout.
I find the questions from the interviewee to be among the most useful part of the interview, for both sides. As an interviewer, it's great insight into the things they care about, what caught their attention during our discussion and want to dig into some more, etc.
I'd also say it's exceedingly difficult to set aside their questions, even if you truly mean that you try to. If someone asks something like "How closely are the office supplies tracked, would anyone notice if stuff went missing?" I doubt you can totally ignore that. Similarly, if someone has a mediocre interview but asks a some absolutely great questions that lead to an amazing discussion are you really going to say "well, I think they'd be a great fit, but I did say I'd not consider their questions as part of evaluation, so guess it's a No from me"?
The hardest one for me is where someone otherwise good asks something like "When can I get my first raise and how much is it?" as their first question. I mean, it's a valid question, but it's hard to ignore that it's the first question.
As an interviewee, it's a great time to figure out what you're getting into. This is a potential future co-worker you're talking to, so if they get upset that you've asked a tough question or even respond with a hint of "psh, that's a stupid question" that's a massive red flag about what taking this job would be like.
My interviewee style is to ask questions during the interview. I feel like it makes it more conversational and pleasant.
I ask so many questions/clarifications during an interview that even if I have a big list going into it, by the time the interviewer asks if I have any questions, I pause, and then most of the time I'll respond something like: "I think we've covered everything I was curious about" and then do a quick recap of my understanding to clarify and uncover any bad assumptions.
My interview to next stage/offer rate is quite high, so I think my interviewee style is reasonably good.
When I interview someone, I personally am interested in a "conversation" with the candidate and not just where I ask questions, they provide an answer. So by the time we are done, the candidate should already have asked a few things since I run the interview as a conversation where they talk to me, ask questions as part of the discussions we are having and of course, answer specific questions that I ask.
At the end, I always ask: do you have any other questions for me. I don't care if they ask me a question for the heck of it but I do care overall whether they were engaged with me through the interview or not. This specially matters as you interview more senior candidates than entry level or junior even though I welcome anyone to ask me anything.
So I would say that go to an interview where you should not have to necessarily ask questions at the end but it should ideally be more of a conversation throughout. It also depends on how much information is revealed by the interviewer upfront. I always talk about the company, the team structure and the specific role before I start getting into details. That gives them an opportunity to later on ask for more clarification etc.
This. An interview where I only get to answer feels like an interrogation. However at the end I ALWAYS ask one more question: was there anything in this interview that made you have second thoughts about hiring me? If so, it gives me a chance to correct it and it gives me the feedback you never get in a rejection letter. Also it shows them I'm open to feedback. If not, there is little chance this person won't hire me.
> Fast forward a week and I got an email that I was not going to be offered a scholarship. Only two other students out of 25 were rejected. I was dumbfounded.
High stakes selection often comes down to random chance. It's entirely possible the author could have asked the perfect question and still missed out, because from the selection committee's perspective all candidates appear equally strong. It's a good position to be in as a hiring manager, but as a candidate it can be difficult to refrain from overfitting the situation.
Probably the best advice, in any situation, is to seek out more options. Apply to more jobs, more scholarships, and more fellowships. Write down more ideas, todo items and bugs.
Disclosures: Had to create a throwaway just for this. Normally (and almost always other than this case, I try not to attack the author).
I've worked with Kevin for over a year when he was at twilio, he was an avid contributor to weekly events and I never had any personal issues with him.
I want to say I've been extremely disappointed with the arc of his career, during his time at twilio I always viewed him as an extremely motivated (probably mostly self taught) engineer. He use to ask very though provoking questions and I found his perspective welcoming. After watching what he did with that VR newsletter startup, seeing some of his contributions in the Go community, and his talks. I've seen a talented young adult spout a lot of stupidity (e.g: this was a terrible talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZYrSIC6LFA), and Kevin, if you're reading this, go back to your roots man.
While the "what did you have for lunch" question may do a bit to surprise the interviewer, there is probably a more valuable go-to question that can be fairly generic in any sort of interview type experience.
"If you were me, what would you improve on (work on, learn next, etc etc)?"
This is beneficial both for the interviewer and you as an interviewee. It lets the interviewer consider you specifically in the context of "are you missing something", and gives them a good opportunity of letting you know where they see your holes/flaws. It also let's them know that you are willing to learn, and trying to understand how to grow and change.
The interviewer will be asking themselves these sorts of questions after the interview anyway, so why not try to get their feedback right then and there, with a potential opportunity for you to correct them, if they think you are missing something that you actually have.
If I’m going into an interview, I’ll usually prepare some questions in advance.
But I’m terrible at coming up with questions during dynamic meetings. I find that I need time to reflect on topics before I can form a clear idea of what I need to ask.
This has backfired several times, usually in meetings with sharp businesspeople (who are so good at asking pointed questions!). Does anyone have tips on how to get better at this?
Here's a really weird option, no idea if this works for anyone but me, but: go for a run before the meeting. I've found it clears my brain of all the junk that's occupying it for a few hours, and lets me hone in on the topic being discussed. It's also a bit of a self confidence boost so I don't feel as anxious about whether the question might be perceived as dumb.
> But I’m terrible at coming up with questions during dynamic meetings. I find that I need time to reflect on topics before I can form a clear idea of what I need to ask.
The trick is to have a set of general questions handy for all situations. "What is the meaning of life", "Is there life after death", "little endian or big endian", etc? The same thing with jokes. Just have a few ready to use on any ocassion.
You already gave the answer yourself. You need to reflect on the topic beforehand. Something that is truly brand-new, you probably got some notification ahead of time that would have allowed you to do thinking prep. Things that are much more relevant to what you're working on or your business might be much more ad-hoc, so then that means you need to be always trying to think deeply about the work that you do and understand and evaluating all the potentials that are available.
Pattern match —- ask yourself “what questions have been useful at similar points in similar meetings” and ask the context-appropriate version of those questions. (If they haven’t already been answered.)
If this comes up a lot, come into meetings with a checklist and go over previous meeting notes and outcomes for “good questions” and “questions you wish you’d asked” and add them to your checklist.
I've never cared when a candidate doesn't have questions questions for me. I've done ~100-200 interviews at FAANG companies and never heard a single complaint in the debriefing about "The candidate didn't have any questions for me."
I feel like once you've done a few interviews you realize that "What's a typical day like?" Isn't really a signal of a candidate's genuine interest, it's the obvious reply to your "Any questions for me?" gambit.
Personally, I wouldn't even ask for questions from the candidate if I didn't know some rare people do genuinely want to ask questions.
FAANG is a little bit different, because you're not really evaluating people as much on "how much do they want to be here", because the answer is essentially the same for most people. For smaller companies, this matters a lot more, and a couple of key hires can really elevate or drag down the office culture.
> For smaller companies, this matters a lot more, and a couple of key hires can really elevate or drag down the office culture.
Is that really a thing between global tech company vs small company or rather big vs small? In a 10 people company, everybody makes up 10% of the people, so they have much more impact on everything than in a company of 10000.
I would say that culture matters a lot more in the hiring/interview process when you expect each individual you're hiring to be a multiplicative force. For smaller startups that are growing, this tends to be true. For larger companies, they tend to grow more linearly, so an individual that only contributes raw units of work is usually sufficient. So I don't think it's purely the percentage of the company that each hire represents, but more so what you expect out of each individual.
Just to offer another perspective, I work for a small consultancy and routinely do our "exec" interview. This is a free-form interview with a member of our leadership team as a final check on the candidate.
I ask candidates some questions about their work history, interesting projects, and follow up on other interview sessions. I always offer them time to ask me questions, and those questions most often make the difference between my recommending them for hire and not. I see those questions as a window into what the candidate values most and find them to be very insightful.
"What did you do yesterday", from the article, is a great open-ended question that tells you a lot about someone.
I've always enjoyed a diff-question, like, what do you wish people knew about xyz, or what surprised you about xyz. Those answers are usually very information dense
In my opinion you learn a ton about candidate in this stage. Firs and foremost, are the curious. Generic questions are fine, but specific questions that respond to the discussion show you’ve both been paying attention and are actually thinking about the job.
It may be a personal pet peeve, but I sometimes get ‘I asked all my questions in the other interviews’. So what, ask them again! The question will be the same, the answer will be different.
I feel the need to disagree with you here, it's absolutely possible a candidate just doesn't have any questions, maybe they've done their research up front, or all their questions were asked during the interview, I wouldn't necessary correlate that with curiosity.
I've been in interviews where I had some questions up front, but they all got answered during the interview itself, either through natural conversation, or because the person interviewing touched on those topics.
> The question will be the same, the answer will be different.
Personally, especially when I know I'm having different interviews with different people, I ask the same question twice, just to evaluate their answers. If the answer to a question (e.g. Do engineers have a lot of input regarding technical decisions) is different between one of the engineers and the dev lead / CTO, then you know there's something wrong.
Especially at bigger companies, where I know the final interview will be with HR, it's interesting to ask questions regarding company policies or culture. You usually get very different answers.
I was going through the new-student induction at UTIAS and one researcher asked if we had any questions. Everyone else was silent, and I got the feeling the guy was feeling bad about it so I asked a question about his research.
I fumbled the question, he made me look like an idiot.
One anecdote isn’t everything, but “just force a question” is not a foolproof strategy.
I have a similar story. It was first day in a machine learning class in a computer science majors (not real ml, baby ml class) and the professor made a point to tell us to ask questions and how there are no stupid questions Bla bla. Just about fifteen minutes later, he was deriving an expression or something but my calculus was rusty so I asked him to elaborate how he went from one step to the next. I vividly remember him saying that is the most stupid question he had ever heard. I don’t think any student asked him any subject matter question all semester (only administrative questions like what’s on the test, project grading, and so on).
This reads as an extended justification for how the author could possibly have failed. He writes as though it must be as simple as 'just should have asked a question'. It's an odd conclusion which communicates its own set of assumptions. It reminds me of people who claim, in all seriousness, that they can always spot X intangible characteristic — without any justification for how they determine their false positive/negative rate in that judgment. This undoubtedly reflects my bias, but I find many (bordering or even definitely including most) 'humble' blog posts to do this; and that is perhaps a further riff on the kind of canned advice we see here. They tend to read, to me, like answers to the interview questions, "Tell me about a time you failed," or, "What is your greatest weakness?" In this case, all the author really reports is that he did extremely poorly relative to his expectations — but he manages to spin it into a maxim. If even someone as qualified as he could be unseated by this tactical error, it surely bears memorializing as advice worth living by.
OP here - please trust that I have given this a lot of thought, both through hours and hours of examining the conversation and introspecting my answers, and (months) later, in a long phone call with the director of the program, who very generously walked me through why they made the decision they did.
I alluded to this in the post - this wasn’t the only thing I did wrong, not at all, but it was by far the easiest to change and the clearest signal to the interviewers that I was overconfident and incurious, and the other stuff would just detract from the message that’s already there.
Thanks for the response. It's valuable that they gave you detailed feedback. The post would be strengthened by enough specifics grounded in that actual feedback to have preempted my response. In any case, I appreciate the conversation.
My comment here should not be read as a personal judgment. It's more of a literary critique of your article as instance of a genre—with an extra helping of editorial critique of that genre.
Right, asking the question is another stress issue with interviews, during the interview you are essentially hunting around for questions to ask this representative of a company that is pretty much like every other company in the tech space for all they like to pretend that they are not. Because at the end of the interview they are going to ask if you have any questions for them, and despite everything being pretty clear cut and boring you should try to find some question that makes you sound insightful and makes an impression but at the same time is not aggressive.
> But if your goal is to cast a wide net [...], maybe make a list of every reason you've used to reject a nontraditional candidate in the past and then email that to the candidate in advance of the interview
Such a list would be a huge legal burden and no sane corporation would send it.
142 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 39.7 ms ] threadhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_cognition#Asking_que...
No, it's not. I'm pretty sure anyone who asked that in an interview would be bottom of the list, regardless of how I felt about their interview otherwise. It's flippant and shows a lack of care about what's going on.
Iv'e never been upset with someone for not asking questions. Interviews are tense and we do try to answer the most common questions before they are asked. If they have no questions, we extend and offer to email us later and we'll answer any questions they come up with later.
Stupid question affect the interview. Lack of questions doesn't.
I suspect some of this is born from the idea that you want to be remembered. Asking a question can help anchor your existence to the people that interviewed you. Again, though, I'm sceptical without data. Feels you could argue this either way.
The top voted comment on the post invents a new cultural signifier, and declares that candidates who fail it should be disqualified! It would be funny if it wasn't a pervasive interviewing practice.
avoiding someone you would probably never see on the job is not a silver lining
If someone’s question was “what did you have for lunch?” and they asked with a smile, I would laugh out loud and then tell them about my lunch, and probably write something like “likeable candidate, has good people skills,” in my review.
It does depend on the context. If it was asked in the context of a casual conversation, say in between sessions -- it's ok.
But when I, the interviewer, am asking "do you have any questions for me?" during an interview, I invariably mean it in a professional context. Answering with "what did you have for lunch?" seems to cross the professionalism line somewhat (why the hell do you need to know what I ate?), and may not be appreciated by many. I wouldn't go as far as to outright dismiss the candidate's viability, but for me personally, it's comes across as weird and non-self-aware rather than funny.
(also, as someone who watches a lot of stand-up, I also have a high threshold for humor -- I'm kinda of a humor snob. I like light-heartedness, but contrived failed attempts at humor are grating to me because they often indicate someone's trying too hard. There's an inauthenticity there that rubs me the wrong way.)
So even if you're right, the trouble is an interviewee might not be able to tell a priori if they got someone like you or someone like me. So it's risky.
(otoh, "what are some good lunch spots around here, in your opinion?", mentioned by another commenter, is almost always positive and indicates a candidate's interest in the workplace environment)
This stuff really does work, I don’t really need it now because i generally find roles through my network.
Is any interviewer really going to tell you the politics are awful, or managers are overbearing? They'll probably give a typical non-answer like "the food is so good you can't help but put on weight".
Candidates do this also when asked their worst traits - it doesn't work.
When I'm interviewing someone and they ask this, I try to answer honestly, although I think it's human nature to still try to put a positive spin on it because a) I work here and there's some element of post purchase rationalization, for want of a better term and b) if they're a good candidate I want to sell them on working with us.
However there are forces in the other direction - it's not in my interest to deceive a candidate into a role that doesn't fit them if they're going to leave when they inevitably find out, or if they're going to be demotivated as a result. I have a vested interest in this being a good fit from both sides.
I also want to give candidates a great experience - we're a small company and not many people have heard of us. Word of mouth is the most powerful recruitment tool we have, in many respects.
To some extent this only works because I genuinely love the place I work and so the bad things I talk about genuinely aren't that bad (I would call them tradeoffs rather than things everyone would consider super negative).
You can already see from the comments on this thread that there are strong opinions on both sides of this -- it's not a consensus. Flippant questions are a gamble is all I'm saying.
p.s. that said, if it were me, I'd treat it as a minor irritation and move on unless the candidate demonstrates a pattern of a lack of seriousness about the interview. It's one thing to be relaxed and casual, but not taking the interview seriously is not a good look.
Also if a company is extremely casual and everyone is in jeans and hoodies, ignore what I said in this entire thread. It doesn't apply.
On the other hand, definitely on the candidate to gauge whether the person they're asking is a total curmudgeon or not before asking.
As an engineer, I've run at least that many engineers. I don't like it when we go off script, because it's hard to compare with previous candidates.
However, candidate question time is for the candidate to gather information, not for me. It's best for everyone if a candidate gets the information they need to decide they'll dislike the job/environment during the interview rather than during the first week.
Wow. Meep, zorp, hire me. The beauty of this section of the interview (as someone who also has done countless of these numbing, repetitive 'script' interviews), that it allows for candidates to be tiny bit unrestrained. Go on, ask whatever you think is important. Or funny. Or something that can give you insight into this job you're tyna get into. That's the part where you can actually differentiate between robots who memorized answers (whatever answer they might be) and people who are actually interesting that YOU, and your team, would find pleasant to work with.
Interviews are the opportunity to meet an interesting person, learn about them, talk about their interests, and sell them on the chance to work at your company.
How could that be boring and repetitive?
You also know that, when people are thinking through a challenging problem in a stressful situation, they mostly won't want to engage in small talk at the same time. Although you can give them hints and ask questions at appropriate times.
It's easy enough to imagine how that could get tiresome, once you've done enough that no solution or mistake is new to you.
And all of that is a great way to introduce a ton of unconscious bias into your interviewing process. You should be spending your time in the interview focusing on determining if the candidate meets the requirements to do the job. Being interesting, having interests you find interesting, etc. are presumably not requirements for the position you're interviewing them for. When you find out they have (or do not have) shared interests with you, as a human being, you're wired introduce bias into your decision making process, whether you intend to or not.
Interviews SHOULD be boring in the repetitive sense. The interview should be tailored to the position, and not the person you're interviewing.
> Interviews SHOULD be boring in the repetitive sense
Repetitive isn’t boring. I believe it’s very possible (essential) for a good interviewer to see the difference.
But your point is valid in the sense that, as an interviewer, I do try to bring energy and interest to each interview, both because it’s what the candidate deserves and it’s better for me too.
And to be clear, most interviews are interesting and enjoyable, even the sessions I’ve done a hundred times. But, just being realistic, neither I nor the candidates are always on our A game, and sometimes the result is a quiet and dull interview.
And to be clear, that may still result in an offer recommendation! Some of these interviews are dry because the candidate knows the material down pat, doesn’t want to chit chat, and has no questions. Those are, in fact, the very kind of person I imagine would improve their performance by smiling and asking what I had for lunch :)
Not saying this is you necessarily, but your post makes me think of certain friends I’ve had over the years who are very introverted and can be very salty about extroverted and/or “charismatic” people. They tend to judge people who are friendly and outgoing as being vapid or shallow - thinking, I suppose, that if they were deep thinkers, they too would be quiet and not care about social niceties.
I think that’s a really dangerous mental trap to fall into. It is perfectly possible to be both brilliant and charismatic. It is also very possible to learn and improve “people skills,” just as you can learn anything else. Thinking otherwise can lead to badly underestimating or misunderstanding others, and limiting ones self.
What an insane thing to say. As if on top of everything else, you also want us to entertain you? Does anybody really believe someone would laugh at that?
I don't know why commenting and replying has to necessarily be so hostile and adversarial.
Just to make sure you see it I’m copying some things I wrote to other replies:
1. Charisma is a plus, but how much depends on the role, and for most roles it’s not going to matter.
2. To be clear, most interviews are interesting and enjoyable, even the sessions I’ve done a hundred times. But, just being realistic, neither I nor the candidates are always on our A game, and sometimes the result is a quiet and dull interview. And to be clear, that may still result in an offer recommendation! Some of these interviews are dry because the candidate knows the material down pat, doesn’t want to chit chat, and has no questions. Those are, in fact, the very kind of person I imagine would improve their performance by smiling and asking what I had for lunch :)
So maybe your good people skills, likeable candidate = "hey, charisma", which depending on what you're interviewing people for gets you those mythical guys who can't code.
But if the most charismatic person out there interviews for an engineering job and can’t code, that debrief would take two seconds, and sound like, “Man, X sure was nice, too bad they can’t do the job.”
on edit: assuming the people are not mythical, although I certainly have known people who could not code well enough to have it be worthwhile having them code, which is I guess a slightly different thing.
Coming at it with my hiring manager hat on, sometimes at the end of the day, you ask "do you have any questions for me?" and it's obvious that the candidate has really asked all the questions of people previous to them. In that way, saying something like "I can't think of anything more right now, all the other interviewers have been so open" or whatever. Plus it's usually pretty obvious the candidates are usually tired at this point.
Now at the beginning of the day, I'd expect some questions. But also, some interviewers simply don't leave enough time for this part of the interviewee, so it's really just going through the motions.
Now my best interview candidate hat on, the real thing is to ask questions while the interview is going on at relevant times. For example, when they ask you about testing, maybe ask, well what frameworks do you use to test? What's your code review process? Let's review it right now. Etc.
Asking stupid questions is definitely a red flag, although as long as they aren't offensive stupid questions, I usually give a pass. It's all a part of the experience, there are no hard and fast rules in hiring.
Sure, you might say that's a window into the rest of the company, and it's true in a way, but the HR person being slightly humourless does not always equal a bad job.
This is an amazing perk to my job. I could even list ~5 other options that were available, and talk about the other 5 places to go which offer 20+ more options.
This leads into great, where did you eat? How common is it to socialize vs go back to your office?
It is a worse way of saying "I don't have a real question for you".
Work environment, atmosphere, infrastructures... There are endless relevant topics that an interviewee could ask about. Anything would be better than "what did you do yesterday".
When you ask people what they value they talk in generalities like "good team communication is important to us," when you ask what they did yesterday you learn that feature development has stalled because everything is being rewritten in Clojure, or whatever, then you can follow up and ask about that.
I'd argue his preparation was inadequate. Part of my interview preparation process is to come up with a list of questions to ask based on the research I've done about the company and position.
In any case I've updated the wording to make my intent more clear.
People reading anymore into this are not the kind of people you want to have to work with.
Who’s on first.
Make sure that your company's interview process leaves enough time at the end of each interview to allow the candidate to ask questions. Don't assume the candidate is OK with emailing questions later because you only left the candidate 3 minutes to talk. The candidate pledged a day of their life to interview as they are interested in your company. If they leave your company at the end of the day without being able to ask all the questions they have, there's a chance they will never bring them up later.
Especially in tech, where you often need to do take-home test; I've seen so many companies not giving feedback on that test. To the point where it seems irrelevant to even do it. If I don't get feedback on a technical test, through email or a follow-up interview, it's instantly a red flag. The company didn't respect the time I put into it, and I don't see how it will become any better when actually working there.
If by that you mean that they will look for another company instead, then I agree. That's what I always do. I am not explaining anything, I just simply ghost the companies who behave like that. I ALWAYS found a more caring company by doing this.
please don't ask made up questions. or else we complete the whole cycle. ask when you really want to know something. else it's just stupid.
If you evaluate their questions, then they might not ask what they actually want to know, for fear they'll be judged for it. That helps no one.
I find the questions from the interviewee to be among the most useful part of the interview, for both sides. As an interviewer, it's great insight into the things they care about, what caught their attention during our discussion and want to dig into some more, etc.
I'd also say it's exceedingly difficult to set aside their questions, even if you truly mean that you try to. If someone asks something like "How closely are the office supplies tracked, would anyone notice if stuff went missing?" I doubt you can totally ignore that. Similarly, if someone has a mediocre interview but asks a some absolutely great questions that lead to an amazing discussion are you really going to say "well, I think they'd be a great fit, but I did say I'd not consider their questions as part of evaluation, so guess it's a No from me"?
The hardest one for me is where someone otherwise good asks something like "When can I get my first raise and how much is it?" as their first question. I mean, it's a valid question, but it's hard to ignore that it's the first question.
As an interviewee, it's a great time to figure out what you're getting into. This is a potential future co-worker you're talking to, so if they get upset that you've asked a tough question or even respond with a hint of "psh, that's a stupid question" that's a massive red flag about what taking this job would be like.
I ask so many questions/clarifications during an interview that even if I have a big list going into it, by the time the interviewer asks if I have any questions, I pause, and then most of the time I'll respond something like: "I think we've covered everything I was curious about" and then do a quick recap of my understanding to clarify and uncover any bad assumptions.
My interview to next stage/offer rate is quite high, so I think my interviewee style is reasonably good.
At the end, I always ask: do you have any other questions for me. I don't care if they ask me a question for the heck of it but I do care overall whether they were engaged with me through the interview or not. This specially matters as you interview more senior candidates than entry level or junior even though I welcome anyone to ask me anything.
So I would say that go to an interview where you should not have to necessarily ask questions at the end but it should ideally be more of a conversation throughout. It also depends on how much information is revealed by the interviewer upfront. I always talk about the company, the team structure and the specific role before I start getting into details. That gives them an opportunity to later on ask for more clarification etc.
High stakes selection often comes down to random chance. It's entirely possible the author could have asked the perfect question and still missed out, because from the selection committee's perspective all candidates appear equally strong. It's a good position to be in as a hiring manager, but as a candidate it can be difficult to refrain from overfitting the situation.
Probably the best advice, in any situation, is to seek out more options. Apply to more jobs, more scholarships, and more fellowships. Write down more ideas, todo items and bugs.
I've worked with Kevin for over a year when he was at twilio, he was an avid contributor to weekly events and I never had any personal issues with him.
I want to say I've been extremely disappointed with the arc of his career, during his time at twilio I always viewed him as an extremely motivated (probably mostly self taught) engineer. He use to ask very though provoking questions and I found his perspective welcoming. After watching what he did with that VR newsletter startup, seeing some of his contributions in the Go community, and his talks. I've seen a talented young adult spout a lot of stupidity (e.g: this was a terrible talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZYrSIC6LFA), and Kevin, if you're reading this, go back to your roots man.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"If you were me, what would you improve on (work on, learn next, etc etc)?"
This is beneficial both for the interviewer and you as an interviewee. It lets the interviewer consider you specifically in the context of "are you missing something", and gives them a good opportunity of letting you know where they see your holes/flaws. It also let's them know that you are willing to learn, and trying to understand how to grow and change.
The interviewer will be asking themselves these sorts of questions after the interview anyway, so why not try to get their feedback right then and there, with a potential opportunity for you to correct them, if they think you are missing something that you actually have.
But I’m terrible at coming up with questions during dynamic meetings. I find that I need time to reflect on topics before I can form a clear idea of what I need to ask.
This has backfired several times, usually in meetings with sharp businesspeople (who are so good at asking pointed questions!). Does anyone have tips on how to get better at this?
The trick is to have a set of general questions handy for all situations. "What is the meaning of life", "Is there life after death", "little endian or big endian", etc? The same thing with jokes. Just have a few ready to use on any ocassion.
If this comes up a lot, come into meetings with a checklist and go over previous meeting notes and outcomes for “good questions” and “questions you wish you’d asked” and add them to your checklist.
I feel like once you've done a few interviews you realize that "What's a typical day like?" Isn't really a signal of a candidate's genuine interest, it's the obvious reply to your "Any questions for me?" gambit.
Personally, I wouldn't even ask for questions from the candidate if I didn't know some rare people do genuinely want to ask questions.
Is that really a thing between global tech company vs small company or rather big vs small? In a 10 people company, everybody makes up 10% of the people, so they have much more impact on everything than in a company of 10000.
I ask candidates some questions about their work history, interesting projects, and follow up on other interview sessions. I always offer them time to ask me questions, and those questions most often make the difference between my recommending them for hire and not. I see those questions as a window into what the candidate values most and find them to be very insightful.
I've always enjoyed a diff-question, like, what do you wish people knew about xyz, or what surprised you about xyz. Those answers are usually very information dense
It may be a personal pet peeve, but I sometimes get ‘I asked all my questions in the other interviews’. So what, ask them again! The question will be the same, the answer will be different.
> The question will be the same, the answer will be different.
Personally, especially when I know I'm having different interviews with different people, I ask the same question twice, just to evaluate their answers. If the answer to a question (e.g. Do engineers have a lot of input regarding technical decisions) is different between one of the engineers and the dev lead / CTO, then you know there's something wrong.
Especially at bigger companies, where I know the final interview will be with HR, it's interesting to ask questions regarding company policies or culture. You usually get very different answers.
I fumbled the question, he made me look like an idiot.
One anecdote isn’t everything, but “just force a question” is not a foolproof strategy.
I alluded to this in the post - this wasn’t the only thing I did wrong, not at all, but it was by far the easiest to change and the clearest signal to the interviewers that I was overconfident and incurious, and the other stuff would just detract from the message that’s already there.
My comment here should not be read as a personal judgment. It's more of a literary critique of your article as instance of a genre—with an extra helping of editorial critique of that genre.
Such a list would be a huge legal burden and no sane corporation would send it.