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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

The question is simple: Imagine if you are extended multiple job offers from different companies, and you are trying to decide which one you will accept. Imagine that they way you go about this is that you write down the things that matter to you from most to least and that you use 3-5 things at the top of that list to decide. Those are your decision drivers. What are they?

My response is simple: Imagine if you have multiple candidates for the same job, and you are trying to decide which one you will hire. Imagine that the way you go about this is that you write down the things that matter to you from most to least and that you use 3-5 things at the top of that list to decide. Those are your decision drivers. What are they?

[ASIDE: I really don't mean to be disrespectful to OP; this may be one of the better interview hacks I've seen. But that's just the point: it is a hack. Hack ones and zeros and earn our respect. But hack us and earn our contempt.]

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I'm on the other side of the table (employer, not employee) and totally agree. This obsession with interview questions is complete egomaniacal bullshit. Get the person in and start working with them. Either get them on a project for even a few hours or hire them on a temporary basis.

And please don't respond by saying "some-big-company" does it by asking why manhole covers are round. The interview process in most companies is broken, especially the big ones. It seems to forget that you're hiring someone to get a job done and instead provides an inflation mechanism for already large egos by saying "We have a gate. And we're smart. Fuck you if you want to work here."

Actually, I think "hire them on a temporary basis" is more egomaniacal than obsessing over job interview questions. For someone to work for you as a temp, they have to leave their current full time job and put their benefits in jeopardy. When you hire someone, you should be ready to commit.

I actually don't see what's so manipulative about asking a candidate what their decision drivers are. Every consultant who's spent a few years in the business knows to ask potential clients what their "key metrics" for success are. It's good to get everyone speaking the same language.

It's a strange kind of humility that demands that other people put their whole life on hold to see if it'll work out to join your team, isn't it?

I somewhat agree with you in a sense that it's not on in my books to ask someone to put their aspirations on hold while I figure out if "they are the right fit".

Man up and make the call about what you feel for a candidate.

What most employers don't do - either by system or personally - is man up and admit they hired the wrong person, replace them with severance and move on. Very few people actually do this. Why not?

Well, the reason is probably that some people are just dipshits when it comes to hiring. Or managing.

> What most employers don't do - either by system or personally - is man up and admit they hired the wrong person, replace them with severance and move on.

For better or worse, that is legally difficult in many places. Once you commit to hiring a permanent employee, you are obligated to some extent to try to work with them and resolve any problems. Firing them outright can be almost impossible unless either their position is literally redundant (in which case obviously you won't immediately be hiring someone else to do the job, will you?) or they are guilty of gross misconduct (such as doing something that involved the police being called to remove them from the office).

It seems common in the jurisdictions I know about for the full employee protections and benefits to kick in over a period of time, maybe on a sliding scale so they aren't fully in effect until a year or two after taking a job, so it's not completely one-sided. But you definitely get employees who play the game and make things that IMHO should be their personal responsibility into an employer's problem. For example, here in the UK there are rules about statutory pay for things like maternity leave. It's not uncommon for someone to take maternity leave for several months, with their employer required to keep paying them at a certain level throughout, and then not go back to work at the end. The problem is, sometimes an action as significant as having a child really does change your perspective and priorities that much, and the employee did go on leave genuinely expecting to return, and other times they knew damn well they weren't coming back the moment they walked out the door but cashed in anyway, and there's no objective way to tell the difference.

To a larger company, where this isn't going to happen very often, you can to some extent write it off as a cost of doing business. But to a small company, being down a member of staff at all can be seriously damaging, and paying out a load of statutory benefits and then getting screwed can literally cause your business to fail. But the rules are what they are, and as long as you have to play by those rules, any employer in such a context is going to be very careful about who they agree to hire on a permanent basis, and a probationary period after hiring isn't unreasonable IMHO.

I'm not aware of the maternity rules in the UK, but I believe that in Canada if somebody attempted the same thing and didn't go back to work they would owe the maternity top-up provided by the company. Of course, there is a certain amount provided by national/federal benefits, however that doesn't affect the employer net-net cash if they get that back.*

I agree though that there is a certain amount of uncertainty when folks are close to coming back from maternity leave. However, keep in mind that the organization (big or small) would have had to fill the position in any case during the maternity period.

* In Canada, maternity leave can take up to something like 50 weeks if the father chooses not to use up their paternity leave.

A candidate who is at an elevated risk of being replaced by severance, which is a position most new hires are in, is probably putting their aspirations on hold while you figure out if they are the right fit. Severance is typically enough to keep an employee above water for a time while they find a new position that fits them better, but it certainly isn't anything people can build dreams on top of.

I think there is a common point of view that wants to assume that recruiting a good fit is something that you determine based on a set of input, and then commit to. If you have to reassess at a later time, and especially if you have to reverse your decision, you've failed at recruiting, and in a way that is preventable in a deterministic way. Experience suggests that people who believe this do one of two things: either they attach an ethical weight to the employee/employer relationship that means you have to weight the cost to your business against the cost to your sense of self-worth; or, they have gotten lucky enough up to this point to meet/interview/hire people who have not misrepresented themselves or otherwise projected an image that they would be much more valuable than they proved to be.

Having been involved in a number of instances in the last two years that have exposed me to the randomness of recruitment and hiring, even using all of the hacks people use to remove the error, I'm honestly a little surprised that people can have any imperatives about recruitment. The whole things seems at best stochastic, and errors are unpreventable.

I think the reason why people are so reluctant to man up is because it means they failed at something we believe they shouldn't fail at. I would argue they've failed as something we all fail at, and that accepting that will make the whole process better for everyone.

You forget that there is another sub-set of people: the ones that just graduated and currently don't have a job. I think that for a recent college graduate the whole temp thing would sound to bad. Now, if you already have a job, then I believe you are more likely to play the whole hiring process game. When I was trying to get that first job, I absolutely hated the HR games. Now that I have a job, I know that I would be more indifferent to the whole random bs questions.

In my experience, when someone is hired on to a new company, they are on a trial basis for a certain number of days anyway. This may seem less risky than being explicitly labelled as a temporary-to-hire worker, but they could still find themselves and their benefits in jeopardy if within that trial period either decides this is not as good a fit as the recruitment process suggested it would be.

I think that underneath the intuitive reaction we have to "temporary worker" vs. "permanent worker on a trial basis", they're actually very alike from an individual risk perspective. Either way, in 30/60/90 days, you could find yourself unemployed and still in the same bind. There may be benefits consequences the direction of a temporary worker, especially if you are temped through an agency. On the other hand, that agency might find you another role if the one you are in doesn't work out.

There may be a different discussion about whether or not having this trial period is right, or ethical, or good business, or whatever, regardless of what whatever label gets put on it. My stance on this is that a good process will inevitably make very bad decisions from time to time, and it's not always the best idea to force those bad decisions to be irreversible.

Maybe my experience with the occasional mistakes of what I've seen as otherwise good processes in my past has made me a little less hard-lined about this.

EDIT: get my quoting italicized correctly.

Just to add, I have a sizable chunk of money waiting to vest. For the right opportunity I would be willing to jump ship before then, but if you need some sort of trial period to make up your mind how about no. Also, like most talented developers I have a decent job, if you can't make up your mind quickly I am not interested. This includes a Google style interview process, if you need to schedule more than 3 hours of interviews sorry I have better things to do with my time than talk with you.

I've said this before, and I don't mind rehashing it here. It isn't meant as a personal slight in the least, your priorities are yours to have, but as someone who does hiring, I do not operate under any desire to keep interviews short for that exact reason.

If my interviews are a waste of your time, then you aren't likely to be the guy I want to hire. I want to hire someone who wants to work for me for more of a reason than to collect a paycheck. I want new hires to believe in our purpose, to fit in with our team, yadda yadda, but ideally, I'd like our interview candidates to actually _want to work_ for our company because they like or admire it independently of whether or not they are collecting their checks from us.

Perhaps I'm biased, but that ideal candidate, in my mind, doesn't consider an extended interview a waste of their time.

Keep in mind that these selection criteria enrich your employee pool in impulsivity and borderline personality disorder.

> you should be ready to commit.

Exactly, I won't be ready to commit until working with them.

I think it's safe to go this way with jobless developers looking to get a job. If your candidate is on a full-time job, you should certainly commit.

I never liked the manhole cover question because most people really don't like it when you tell them that the answer they have is wrong. It's not entirely because they don't fall in the hole, that's part of it, but it's also because of the two shapes that satisfy that requirement they are far easier to manufacture.

The second shape is an equilateral triangle and they have been used in the past for manhole covers, most notably in New Hampshire. They're falling out of use because of the fact that circular ones really are that much easier to manufacture and have a few other advantages such as the fact that they have no tips to break off (though to be honest I don't know how easy it is to break the point off a triangular manhole cover).

And this is wrong answer as well.

Manhole covers are round because manholes are round. The question is why manholes are round?

Manholes are round because round shaft requires less material for the walls to hold soil pressure. The same reason why most wells are round. As a matter of fact when this is not a concern manholes and their covers quite often are not round - just walk on the sidewalk in any modern city.

The question is why are American manholes round.

You can walk quite a way in Britain before you see a circular manhole cover. Domestic drain covers are almost always rectangular galvanized steel, and aren't actually that heavy, so dropping one doesn't happen that often.

Digging and constructing a rectangular inspection pit is much easier than a circular one.

> And this is wrong answer as well.

There isn't a wrong answer to this question unless you are asking an engineer about a specific manhole cover they have data about.

> Manhole covers are round because manholes are round.

That's clearly not the whole story. There is no reason why a shaft has to be covered by the same shape as the shaft. If there were significant drawbacks to having round manhole covers, we'd just have another shape with dimensions large enough to not fall down. There aren't, in fact round covers are fairly easy to manufacture as long as high precision isn't required, as simcop2387 noted.

There is a strong reason for the shaft to be covered by the cover of the same shape: it requires less material than any other shape. So with all else being equal, it's the optimal shape; it makes sense to use other shape only if there are other outweighing concerns.

I'd be fine if a candidate asked me this question as employer at the end of the interview. I'd answer honestly.

But if this was your stock response -- to immediately mirror question, it'd be a big turn off and tell me that you're gonna be a pain in the ass to work with.

>tell me that you're gonna be a pain in the ass to work with. //

It does the reverse too surely. It tells a prospective employee that the employer is all about jumping through needless hoops - that they're going to be a pain in the ass and require things that are rather unrelated to actual productive work.

Personally I think I'd find it a turn off from either side. Is it a useful question? I can see how it could give a good indication about ability to think on the fly to provide a politic answer. If that's part of the job then it seems not completely unreasonable.

Are you saying that trying to better understand a prospective employee's motivations for coming to work is "needless hoops"?

It might be. Suppose that you're hiring service staff - a waiter or waitress is a good example. It is often better to show a professional respect for their abstraction layers than to invite them to talk about the fact that they're aspiring to become an actor or actress. Asking such a person "what are your priorities?" is first off the invitation, "bullshit me, I want to see how well you do." So they might answer "well, my first priorities are making people happy and cleaning tables." That's a hoop -- needless or not I'll leave you to judge, but demanding that they jump through that hoop to work with you could make you a pretty sucky person to work with, if that's the attitude you take towards all of your employee interactions.

Even if you sincerely care about your waiters and waitresses and want to encourage their acting careers on the side, it still stretches a bit into the unprofessional, no? You're asking them to imaginatively mix their contexts around in ways that they might not be intending to do when they work for you. The fact that you've asked me to simultaneously be frank with you about my external life, and that you also expect me to censor things which might be deemed 'irrelevant' like "well, I need a software company that I can leave after six months because I want to go and build schools in India once I get enough money," or to confess them even though they might make it much less likely for you to hire me, is potentially a needless hoop.

If you're hiring for a job where a) the person doesn't really want it, they are just desperate for a job, any job and b) you don't really care about the motivation of your staff, then yes you've got a point - it possibly is a needless hoop.

But for a lot of jobs, that's not really the case. If I was going for a job as a step up from the one I've got now, I'd be delighted to be asked this question and would give an honest answer. If my actual motivations didn't align with what the company believed it was offering (if, for instance, they were only interested in trying to push you higher and higher into management rather than allowing you to become truly expert at your current job), then I'd want to make sure I found out before I took the job.

Might want to refer to this:

>> Hack ones and zeros and earn our respect. But hack us and earn our contempt.

By you asking the question you have already earned the interviewee's contempt - now it is only a matter of how that is expressed. Some people express it openly, others are more diplomatic. The result is the same though -- a person who is not going to take your offer.

Bottom line: the question is manipulative, and everyone with a bit of self-awareness will figure that out. Nobody wants to work for a manipulative person.

I don't see it as manipulative. I'm not a massive fan of the phrasing, but the question is just a differently-dressed version of 'what are your priorities'.

If you get worked up about that, then it would be a definite black mark against employing you. If you would refuse a job offer because of it, I would say it was a bullet dodged.

My top priority is to not have someone gaming my other priorities.

> By you asking the question you have already earned the interviewee's contempt

An interviewee who holds me in contempt for asking them a question?

They're probably not really suited to working with grownups.

It's often the case that we criticize others for our own faults, and I would apply that here.

You have asked a loaded question which has a nasty underlying implication. You might not have intended it that way, but it does have that subtext. Just to make it totally explicit, suppose I answer "money" in my top 5 then you might say "oh, he cares too much about money, he's some greedy person, not the upstanding sort we want here", but if I don't answer "money" in my top 5 you might say, "well money isn't important to you so I won't pay you what you're worth."

It's like the more-famous question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" -- which presumes a statement as fact without asserting it, and therefore is offensive and difficult to reply to.

The difference is, the factual state presumed -- even if you didn't intend it (though the author certainly did) -- is, "I am an armchair psychoanalyst. Let me psychoanalyze you." You've taken your role as "someone who will decide whether you could make this company money" and raised it to the power of "someone who might decide whether you're a worthwhile human being."

If you're not prepared to see that this might offend some people, and to apologize and admit that you hadn't thought of it that way, then you're probably not really suited to working with grownups. ^_^

You're right! Getting defensive in job interviews is a cracking idea. Job interviews are a perfect example of two-way rapport-building conversation, and should be therefore treated as a battle-field, thrust and counter thrust, until you finally defeat your interviewer in intellectual combat, emerging victorious, pious, and ... uh ... without a job.

I don't see how this could possibly have been a response to what I said, nor how I could be construed as saying that. (Actually, the closest it comes is that "You're right! X is a good idea!" is the same sort of crap that "Have you stopped beating your wife?" pulls.)

I will also reiterate that we often accuse others of our own faults. When you find yourself accusing me of "getting defensive", you should ask "is this comment that I am writing right now getting defensive?" Because it certainly sounds that way to me.

For the record, I do not think that holding you in contempt for asking a loaded question constitutes "intellectual combat." Let's review. In this hypothetical situation, we are given that you have asked, "so, imagine that you had a bunch of job offers, how would you choose between them?" and someone really responded, "so, imagine that you had a bunch of job candidates, how do you choose between them?".

You have a number of options. One is, you could handle it gracefully. You wouldn't say "oh this person is a pain in the ass!" because what they've asked is no more dickish than what you've asked, and if anything they've showed you the way in which you are being dickish. Your question was -- even though you might not have intended it -- potentially quite manipulative, and you might have significant conflicts of interest. So the graceful way is to try to recover the interview: "Okay, so yeah, I guess my question has a manipulative subtext. Sorry. I didn't mean it in that way, was just trying to be friendly and make my workplace better."

That's not what you suggested. You suggested that your reaction, facing this situation, was to say, "you probably can't deal with grownups, I'm not hiring you, get out." The irony which I'm trying to show you is: this is a childish way to handle the situation, to accuse the other of being childish rather than admit your own fault and strive to be better.

Now, would you care to tell me where I said 'Getting defensive in job interviews is a cracking idea'?

I think it's totally cool to ask that question, but if you're going to ask that instead of answering mine, I'm going to assume you're an argumentative dick and probably wrap up the interview pretty quickly. The "I know you are, but what am I?" line of responses doesn't really fly well for me when I'm interviewing people.

That strategy pretty much guarantees that you will eliminate both argumentative dicks and A-players. Good luck with that.

Perhaps. But I'd much rather pass on someone who might have been exceptional than hire someone who has already proven themselves to be a bit of an asshole.

Or someone who's willing to call out your bullshit.

If they think a question that gets at "What are your main priorities in looking for new employment?" is bullshit, I hope they do walk out of the interview so I don't waste anymore time on them.

Agreed, but this is also a shame. So many exceptional people don't have a chance to get hired because we're fitting the process towards the median of the distribution. Isn't there a system to recruit and develop truly great people?

I disagree. The only people that would pull this trick (answering the question with a question) have a lack of judgement and social skills.

Having said that, I'm against gimmicks in interviews.

Augmentative dicks always think they are A-players. That's very rarely the case, but they'll never rise far enough to find that out.

Argumentative dicks are often your key employees. If they aren't talking, you know the idea is good.

In fact, I'd argue that yes men and the under-confident but easy to get along with are the absolute worst kind of employees - They won't tell you that the car is headed off a cliff until it's already three feet off the edge.

There's a pretty wide range of employees between the dude who is mocking his interviewer because he disagrees with a question, and an under-confident yes man who just goes along with everything. Arguing for the sake of improving things is different than arguing for the sake of arguing. Argumentative dicks, in my experience, do the latter more often than the former.

Be clear here however that our "argumentative dick" has simply asked the same question of the employer that was asked of him.

Sometimes, forcing someone to answer the very question they have posed is a great way of pointing out any flaws.

The taking of offense here is the bigger enemy to progress than anything else in this exchange, and that didn't come from the interviewee.

I'm all for people being cordial and polite, and many programmers could learn a thing or two about human interaction, but the idea that asking a question in response during an evaluation of capability (on both sides) is an insult is a little bit of a stretch.

Right on. You've clearly got your head on straight.

Others here seem more interested in giving snarky half-truths.

I agree. At my work, disagreeing with the upper management gets you fired. Sometimes you just shut up if you want a paycheck. Then you get where you can actually discuss why something is a bad idea (like with my DIRECT supervisor).

You don't have to be an argumentative dick to express doubt in something. Nor are you necessarily an underconfident yes man if you dont speak up. Circumstances dictates a lot of behavior.

> At my work, disagreeing with the upper management gets you fired.

Even if they're wrong? Well, in that case, good riddance.

The takeaway is you don't want spineless employees, you want them free thinking and unafraid to speak up when they sense something is wrong. That being said, "argumentative dick" doesn't immediately equate to star employee, in fact I'd say that moniker is for people who have some of the qualities you are referring to, but haven't learned to adapt themselves to team environments and/or are unable to apply their challenges and criticisms constructively.

In regard to the original situation, I think the interview question in the link is a reasonable one to ask for most places and most positions. The question in reverse is also pretty useful and any candidate genuinely asking it in return (after answering yours) would be a Good Sign. A candidate who doesn't answer, however, and just fires back the question in reverse is showing flags of being an argumentative dick.

I like argumentative dicks. The important thing is that the arguments are good, not that precious feelings are protected. Though I would prefer if we could refrain from being dicks about it, if at all possible.

Ding!

It's so hard for companies to find good talent, it's silly to dick around with mind games and petty power plays.

Find good folks. Realize that on average you're going to have them around for maybe three years, five if you are super lucky, ten if you win the lottery, one if you rub them the wrong way. Treat them with respect, ask yourself how the HELL you can bend over backwards to try to make their experience working at your company good enough to keep them around for a while. Don't talk down to them. Don't imagine that they are beholden to you for anything.

If you are unlucky enough to end up in a situation where you as an employer are holding all of the cards in a hiring situation then I have some bad news for you. You aren't hiring the best candidate possible, you're hiring a mediocre candidate.

Not to play an "argumentative dick" or anything :), but...

Sometimes mediocre is good enough. Not every employee needs to be a superstar. Personally, I don't care that the receptionist is the best receptionist in the world; I care that he/she is polite and competent enough that I don't need to worry about reception.

Also, be careful in deluding yourself that there aren't surprisingly good candidates out there that don't have such a high opinion of themselves. Some of the best people I've ever worked with didn't get the best wages and deals. In fact, the people with the "best" packages were often 2-3 rungs lower than the best employees.

Mediocre is always good enough for employer. But mediocre employee will put additional burden on your top employees, so they will wear off quickly and jump off the board.

A receptionist that does her job well enough to be a problem is much less of a headache than a receptionist that has aspirations and talent to be a programmer.

I think this can be more diplomatically put.

E.G. One could respond to the question, saying that this is an important process that they would go through - even if there was only ONE offer letter to decide upon, but still provide your answer.

Then ask, in a more respectful manner, something along the lines of:

"Based on this question, what are the top three things you/your company values in an employee and further, what are the top three things the company values about itself."

You can also ask the interviewer what the top 3 things he values about working for that company.

---

One of the toughest questions I have had to answer in an interview was from Twitter, where the manager asked me "What would be the one thing, should we work together, that could cause problems for us?"

This was a pain to answer because, frankly I know nothing of this guy, so I replied "Poor communication. If we can't communicate well with each other, it will make both our jobs hard."

He said "Great thanks, when are you available to start?"

I told him, the interview was over, and I never heard back.

"He said "Great thanks, when are you available to start?" I told him, the interview was over, and I never heard back."

Is there something I'm missing? I don't quite get how him asking that question led to you turning down the job so abruptly

samstave didn't turn down the job-he told the interviewer his start date. That was the end of the interview. Afterwards, samstave never heard back from twitter.

Yep.

But the way it was stated after the multi round interviews appeared to imply that they were interested in me.

After a few weeks of nothing, I emailed the recruiter and got a terse "we've decided to go another direction" email.

I thought it was ironic that I had said poor communication would be a bad thing for us, and then there was poor communication in telling me they weren't interested.

It all worked out great for both of us though, because the job I have now is such a better fit for me than twitter would have been.

There's a difference between "I told him, the interview was over" and "I told him the interview was over"

yes, right, I tend to overlook punctuation when reading comments, etc but he did punctuate correctly there, my mistake

I wish employers would ask both of these questions during interviews. They often focus on what I currently know, and not the overall work experience component. As a Web/Mobile developer and hiring Project Manager, I've switched jobs often, never working more than 1 year in each job until recently, for the past 10 years. My answers at this point are:

I'd like to work as close as possible to home. I live in DC, commutes add to stress, and you end up having little personal/family time working further away from home. This is worth even sacrificing a income because time matters more to me now than $10k. It doesn't hurt that it saves on gas with rising prices.

Secondly, working in an environment of people that pull their weight. This is a paramount to me. If there are a bunch of unqualified employees that don't work hard to improve their English speaking and writing skills, communication becomes a major issue in meeting objectives, and I often end up with a ton of proofreading assignments. Having people around me that know answers, and that also put in the work, rather than just a bunch of blind "decision makers" or "oversight managers" is paramount to a good working space. Personal attitudes are also paramount, people don't need to be overjoyed and silly, but I can't tell you how many interviews I've said no to when they ask me about how I get along with difficult people. Its a company's responsibility to breed a mutually respectful, productive, and cordial business culture. Too many companies allow negative and difficult people to climb their ranks, I'll never work for them long if that's the case.

Lastly, I expect a company to offer a good work/life balance. I want to work for a company that clearly defines objectives, and when they're met, I don't want to be "nickeled" and "dimed" over my hours... If my work is high quality, and all goals are met, don't squeeze me. i realize that its even good to pull extra hours on projects, but a company that doesn't realize that they should "ease up" on employees in quiet times is a company that faces high turnover, they're throwing away all the intellectual capital they build by pressing employees (that eventually leave or get burnt out) too hard. This issue is usually fixed by careful attention to contract terms during bidding. If there's a requirement for a performance based contract, if you want to be happy, avoid the trend. Your oversight managers should be the ones responsible for maintaining quality and upholding employee conduct through reasonable oversight. Don't turn your company into a metric-driven juggernaut by giving in to strict SLAs/Contract terms, or you'll suffer crippling turnovers and you'll eventually lose your contract holding through (continually) rising expectations, or through liability for errors.

Do you think the subject matter of the question is off-limits, or do you object to the way it's being asked?

No, I think that the subject matter is perfectly appropriate and that OP is either pretty clever or quite experienced to come up with it. In fact, I would even hope to have a such a discussion to know that the prospective employer is serious and has put as much thought into the process as I have.

I have always believed the the interview process must be a 2 way street; we are equals interviewing each other for mutually beneficial long term possibilities. The way OP presented this seemed way too manipulative for my taste; it destroyed that "equal plane" I covet.

So yes, my problem was not with the subject material, but the way it's being asked. (Which is also why I added the little ASIDE; I wanted to demonstrate that without just looking like a snarky response.)

Noted. I didn't mean to come off as adversarial or manipulative. This is really a conversation starter, and I rarely just write down the answer and move on.

But I do feel like it helps me learn a whole lot about the candidate without compromising that trust or condescending to them with "what's your biggest weakness?" or some such.

I admit it's a hack. Or rather, it's just a tool, like many other that helps me learn something about the candidate. So yeah, all those caveats definitely apply.

I think the OP's explanation and reasoning demonstrate why it isn't a "hack" or at least why that word conveys the wrong meaning. The thing is that all preconceived, non-knowledge based interview questions are hacky... they're asked to get a certain response. In my opinion, a poor interviewer will expect a right or wrong or specific answer in those responses. A good interviewer will genuinely try to get to know the candidate through those questions. He says something to that effect here:

"Mind you there isn’t a right answer. It just helps to place the candidate in a coordinate system that I can understand and interpret."

It's all about coming to understand the person, rather than evaluating them on a set of criteria. The difference is critical.

Edw519 - very good point.. the interview question comes off adverserial. I'm sure that is not the intent.. but the tone definitely makes it seem that way.

Then again.. its their company. :/ I noticed many companies forget that the employer/employee relationship is symbiotic.

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