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I'd also like to chime in on case study questions. I work for a medical device company and have interviewed 6 engineer new grads, and I ask them the "how many elevators do I need in a building that is x by x sq. Feet" question, so don't think it is only for professionals or consultants. My reasoning is that most of the time the most crucial skill for a new hire in a fast paced engineering company is breaking down a problem and walking someone through their reasoning. Unfortunately I have only seen one interviewee with an impressive academic project or past experience so I find a question like this very helpful. However in disagreement with above, I have very little expectation of what the correct answer is. At first I looked for hard math answers, but one guy got a number totally based on end user satisfaction and utility to determine location. This made me think "hey this guy has a real knack for the end user and customer perspective, maybe he belongs in our product safety group". So I would say don't try to explain what you aren't comfortable with just because the traditional answer is doing a lot of estimating math, unless you know that is what the company is looking for. Also more generally I think a big thing is don't sweat too much of the small stuff, a lot of us here probably have half the OP down because we are normal human beings who interact with people everyday, so it would be worth your time to identify your weaknesses and start there. Kinda like all that pick up artist crap, if you are looking to see if the interviewers pupils dialate as a sign they like you, you probably need to reevaluate yourself.
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May 2, 2013 15:32
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I will admit in the interview for my soon to be new job I did almost literally say "a-hole" but caught myself and just said "guy", so yea sweat some small stuff. I suppose my advice is more be able to prioritize what you need to work on the most and not get bogged down on what shade of grey your socks are before practicing behavioral questions. For case studies, it definitely doesn't disqualify an applicant. I think people can be taught problem solving skills as much as they can be taught technical and personal skills, its just that a lot of candidates aren't completely prepared for them so it tends to correlate to a "Johnson, its 9 AM Monday and we found out our last week of testing might be invalidated, I need you to figure out what we should do by Wednesday morning!!" type situation, but I skew to a more factual foundation(ie I wouldn't ask new science hires how to increase the revenues of a bakery, that's a bit too far out of their wheelhouse). Couple it with a few tech questions and behavioral ones(we have loooonggg interviews, which actually let's us cover everything) and I feel like I come out with a good picture of a candidate. Crazyweasel fucked around with this message at 03:31 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 03:28
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KernelSlanders posted:I'm not sure if this is the right thread for talk about giving interviews. My apologies if it isn't. I used to be part of a team that interviewed entrly level test engineers at my old job, at that type of questioning was my bread and butter. I stole it from when I was interviewed for a business analyst position. I got the job so I thought my answer was 'right' , but asking an open ended question actually gives you a lot of insight into the way the candidate approaches the problem. Much more than must right or wrong. I used to ask "if I had a building in the middle of downtown that was 200' x 200' and 10 stories tall, how many elevators would I need to have installed to handle all the people?" It was interesting to see where people derived their answers. I had some people take a purely mathematical approach, another guy got hung up on safety standards and regulations, and a few folks just said 'I don't know where to start'. So questions like these, while not exactly relevant to the job, can find insight if you want to see how they think...
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Jul 14, 2014 23:37
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