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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

I like when a person admits they don’t know something in an interview. It shows they aren’t afraid to admit when they don’t have the answer instead of trying to lie their way through it and hoping they don’t get caught. Extra bonus points if they look the thing up later to show they are curious and want to close knowledge gaps when they become aware of them.

People who are unwilling to say, “I don’t know, let me look into that,” are not fun to work with. After a while it’s hard to know what is fact vs fiction, so everything is assumed to be a fabrication.

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When I was 11 I took a live assessment to get into the gifted program at school. I thought I didn't do very well because about 20% of the questions I answered "I don't know".

At the end the assessor told me that I passed specifically because I said "I don't know". They purposely put questions on the test they didn't expect you to answer to see what you do when faced with an unanswerable question.

I've used that in my own life since -- I much prefer working with (and have a much more positive view of) people who are willing to say "I don't know".

Doesn't the SAT work similarly? They penalize wrong answers to discourage guessing. Either be confident in your answer or leave the question blank.

I assume so, at least it worked that way when I took it 30 years ago.

I couldn't agree more. When I am interviewing candidates, one of the things that I'm looking for is that the applicant is willing to say "I don't know" when they don't know. That's a positive sign. If they follow that up with a question about it, that's even better.

If a candidate is trying to tap-dance or be vague around something to avoid admitting ignorance of it, that's a pretty large red flag.

For every one person hiring with your mentality there are a hundred other managers looking to cut down the stack of a thousand resumes in any trivially easy way they can. That starts with saying sorry we are looking for someone else when you say you don’t know x or lack z on your resume. You are literally incentivized to lie and fake it on the job.

You could argue that researching it then and there proves that you know how to learn stuff quick. I agree that there should be disclosure though.

Yeah, the disclosure is very important. It’s the difference between an open book test and notes written on their thigh.

During some interviews I’d give people access to a computer. If they could quickly find answers and solve problems, that is a skill in itself, but I could see what they were looking up. Sometimes that part would make or break the interview. Some people didn’t have a deep base of knowledge in the area we were hiring for, but they were really good at finding answers, following directions, and implementing them successfully. They would be easy to train on the specifics of the job. Other people couldn’t Google their way out of a paper bag, I was shocked at how bad some people were and looking up basic things. Others simply quit without even attempting to look things up.

I'm going to be pedantic and challenge your use of the word 'learn' here. I tend to agree with the notion that being able to say 'I don't know, let me find out' and then find out quickly with a correct answer is in general a Good Thing™, but I wouldn't equate that with learning the thing they just looked up.

The difference between 'learn', 'cram', 'regurgitate' etc. depends on the level of understanding required, and the length of the recall.

And whether the interview is just asking definitions or silly certification questions, or things requiring deeper understanding.

while I agree with you in the context of a work environment 100%, in an interview there is a series of checkboxes interviewers need to hear and if you say I don't know I will look into that you can really screw yourself.

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