Hacker News Reader

Comment by brandonb | Hacker News Reader

Would you consider this a reasonable interview question for a management role? One major communication skill for people managers is to "turn around" a conversation that would naturally put people on the defensive into something that can be a learning and growth opportunity. Two core ingredients for that skill are self-awareness and the ability to empathize with people with whom you disagree (or who may even dislike you).

View on HN

If you want to test for their ability to "turn around" a conversation, then why not propose a hypothetical situation and ask how they might respond. Maybe:

"How would you handle it if X came to you and said Y..."

Or, if they already have past management experience, ask for an example of a time when something like this happened, and how they handled it, and what they learned. Or maybe start with this and then propose a hypothetical as a backup if the candidate doesn't have anything off the top of their head?

I don't know, just doesn't seem necessary to jump up to that level of negative self-generalization with the candidate just to "test a management skill." I mean, come on, "people who don't think very highly of you"??? Who is "people"? Why are you generalizing like that?

"Hey, so, everything bad that's ever happened to you at work, so, like, what did you learn from that??"

well I've only experienced these questions in regards to a developer role - generally ones like "tell me why you're the best person for this job" or "why should we hire you instead of someone else with the same skills who is willing to work for less" to which my answers were - "there's thousands of people who can do this particular job you're asking be done, the guy I came down with here who's sitting in the lobby to also interview is one of them, I'm another" and "obviously if they have the same skills and are willing to work for less you should hire them and not me"

I didn't get either one of those jobs, now that I think of it.

Being asked those questions in an interview is a highly synthetic situation with, in my opinion, very little diagnostic value. But my personal experience with hiring of managers, or indeed being a manager, is nil. So let's say it's a strong opinion weakly held.

I'm personally not a fan of such games and tests.

I would instead present them a situation which tests the same skill, that way it's clear I'm testing them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com