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Comment by malvosenior | Hacker News Reader

Doing this during a job interview is not going to give you the results you expect. For every person like you who wants to hear "I don't know" there are 10 people who will pass on you for not knowing something. People's expectations are set by the worst interviewers they experience, not the best (and honestly, trying to trap people isn't the "best" anyway).

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So far it's worked very well for me. Since I've started using it (admittedly my sample size is small) I've found some very effective programmers, and automatically filtered out a lot of egotistical types. Software is usually a collaborative effort and this technique helps in that regard.

As another commenter mentioned, you're probably doing more damage than you realize. A lot of more experienced people are going to recognize this as toxic behavior and word will get out that your company isn't healthy. You may not even notice, but this kind of thing will keep the best people out of your pipeline if you continue to do it.

> Since I've started using it (admittedly my sample size is small) I've found some very effective programmers,

This is not the only way to find very effective programmers. You should level up your own ability to discovery this in someone in a non antagonistic and more straightforward manner.

I've done well over 200+ interviews myself, and been on hiring committees where I have had chances to review other interviews. This kind of behavior usually trashes the following ones and aets the candidate up for failure.

To be fair I have "fessed up" to not knowing about a subject that was mentioned on my CV where I had used the tech a little bit 5+ years ago. Been offered the job both times. Though I could see if you hadn't had that experience it wouldn't be the answer that you would want to give.

I don't know about others, but I expect people to have some fluff on their resumes. I don't blame them because recruiters and HR types love fluff, so fluff gets your foot in the door. Recruiters might skip over a person who has MongoDB on their resume instead of Elasticsearch because they don't know they are similar technologies. So it's reasonable that a candidate hold the recruiters hands.

If candidates come out and say such when I ask them questions about it, I'll just move on. I won't hold it against them unless it happens excessively.

As a recruiter or an employer? I've only done "employer type" interviews.

How do you know whether the ones that were filtered out were egotistical?

Largely because they were making things up and changing the subject instead of answering honestly.

I once told an interview I didn't know something and they told me that I should never say I don't know something and just try to make something up.

I don't really agree with him and just kept doing it though and things seems to be fine.. If anything I would say that interview was successful for both parties because we probably wouldn't get along and that is totally fine.

I was told something similar by my high school history teacher Mr. Kolhaise, but I think it was phrased in a more helpful manner and it's always stuck with me.

He said "Don't just tell me what you don't know, tell me what you do know" or in other words, don't just say "I don't know" but say something like "I don't know, but based on what I do know this is what I think the answer would be and this is how I would figure it out".

It really helps that everyone forgets what people say before the "but" and you can help get across the idea that while you may not know everything you know how to figure things out.

That is the goal of an interview! You ended with more information that you had before.

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