Before a job interview, most candidates invest hours researching the organisation and rehearsing responses to typical questions. However, no amount of preparation can guarantee the interviewer won’t throw an unexpected challenge to catch you off guard.
That’s precisely what one employer claims to do when interviewing applicants for positions at his firm – asserting it helps filter out unsuitable candidates. Responding to the Reddit thread titled, “Managers, do you have special ‘tests’ for interviewees that you put them through without their knowing?”, he described how he would escalate the difficulty of his questions during interviews to observe candidates’ reactions.
He said: “I used to do interviewing for a job that was, basically, hacking the internet.
“At some point in the interview I’d ask them increasingly advanced questions until they came to something they didn’t know.
“Then I’d explain it to them. If they thought the new thing was really cool, that was a big plus.”
“It showed they really were interested in the job itself, not just in the paycheck.”
Responding to this, one user revealed how they nearly secured a role despite being under-qualified, purely because of their eagerness to learn.
They said: “I almost got a job I was not qualified for through acting like this. I was completely upfront about my qualifications, said immediately when I didn’t know something, but then tried to reason my way through it, or asked.
“It was genuinely interesting, and I actually heard later they would have hired me, figuring that I could be brought up to speed relatively quickly, if HR hadn’t shot them down because of my resume.”
Another user commented: “That’s the way I do all technical interviews. Ask general questions, find something they don’t know, explain it, then have them apply it to another question.
“You can never expect someone to know everything, but the ability to learn quick is way better than knowing everything.”
Drawing inspiration from this approach, one user remarked: “I really like that style of interviewing. I’m going to apply that to future interviews.”
Expanding on this point, a final user noted: “I am lucky enough to work at a company that’s ‘doing it right’.
“Our one and only HR person does the initial phone screen to make sure candidates aren’t unreliable psychopaths, and that’s it.
“Every single person after that who talks to the candidate is someone who is actively working in the department they’re applying to.”
Source – https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/boss-tests-job-candidates-upping-32868897