Stupid Interview Questions

Bev D · Apr 17, 2023

Tidge said:
I seriously dislike these "Marilyn vos Savant" type questions during job interviews. They are fine for water-cooler discussions, but they are not practical. Besides, why am I being hired by someone who sits around watching old daytime TV game shows?

Everyone has different interview approaches. I have found this probability question to be quite effective at teasing out problem solving, reasoning and learning skills. So much so that I have used it as part of my quality engineering training, again to great effectiveness. However, I do think that the snide remark about me sitting around watching 50 year old game shows was rude and uncalled for. Just for the record I only watched the Monty Hall show as a child when home sick from school. I guess that makes me a doddering old fool eh?

Mike S. · Apr 17, 2023

The Monty Hall question is one of the most debated and difficult statistical questions ever and one that had thousands of engineers, statisticians, professors, and mathematicians emphatically giving wrong answers. I don't think it is a valid interview question for 99.9% or more of jobs for any reason. Take someone who is already stressed to the max in an interview and ask them one of the most difficult questions you could possibly ask?

Questions like "do you know the color of the floor" and then dinging you if you say anything more than yes or no, are bogus, IMO. Some people might consider you a smart*** if you simply answer yes or no.

Trick or inappropriate questions during interviews, it seems to me, tells me more about the interviewer than they will learn about me, whatever my answer.

JMO.

Tidge · Apr 17, 2023

Bev D said:
Everyone has different interview approaches. I have found this probability question to be quite effective at teasing out problem solving, reasoning and learning skills. So much so that I have used it as part of my quality engineering training, again to great effectiveness. However, I do think that the snide remark about me sitting around watching 50 year old game shows was rude and uncalled for. Just for the record I only watched the Monty Hall show as a child when home sick from school. I guess that makes me a doddering old fool eh?

No insult intended, as I took this to be a hypothetical. I preferred Match Game myself.

I'm well aware of the Monty Hall 'problem', but there are elements of it that I don't think are applicable to real-world problem solving:

It's a fully constrained problem
It's "solution" relies on a rational, 100% rule-following "opponent"
The risk/reward is binary in outcome

Personally, I always felt the problem would be more interesting in Monty opened the curtain to reveal the new car and then asked if the contestant would like to switch choices.... or if there never was a new car behind any of the curtains. In the real world, it is disfavored for a "problem solver" to guess at an answer (even if there are finite multiple options), and then it is furthermore highly unlikely to be shown (by some authority?) that one of the solutions they didn't guess was "wrong" and be given the opportunity to change their minds.

It's a neat parlor exercise (for those with no prior knowledge), but unless the job involves highly-constrained binary outcomes I can't see it being particularly insightful. If a candidate already knows the answer, I don't think anything is to be learned by asking them about it.

EDIT: It does occur to me, as a self-reported doddering old fool, I can't decide if the candidate or the interviewer is supposed to be wearing the Little Bo-Peep costume when the Monty Hall question is asked.

Miner · Apr 17, 2023

I avoid the theoretical type questions and focus on practical questions. One that I use when I interview candidates where knowledge of Lean is required is the following: "Have you ever completed a lean project that met ALL of the project deliverables for the targeted operation, yet failed to deliver a noticeable improvement for the entire process?" The answer to this is inevitably Yes, to which I ask the follow-up question: "Can you explain why this happened?" If they truly understand Lean and the Theory of Constraints, they will respond that the project did not target the process constraint. I have screened out a lot of candidates with that question, and the ones that could answer correctly have been great employees.

Randy · Apr 17, 2023

Tidge said:
No insult intended, as I took this to be a hypothetical. I preferred Match Game myself.

Ilost on Jeopardy baby......

AllTheThings · Apr 17, 2023

Well, to throw some hypergolic rocket fuel on the conversation, I asked ChatGPT to answer the Monty Hall Problem. I figure an interviewer is either looking to see how I would find an answer to the question and is looking at process /approach (good interviewer), OR is just looking for a gotcha (A good way for me to screen out a bad potential employer). Using an AI to provide a first-pass answer should provide an interviewer with some insight to the candidate

Anyway, the illustrious AI says:

The Monty Hall problem is a probability puzzle based on a game show scenario. The game show host, Monty Hall, presents the contestant with three doors. Behind one of the doors is a valuable prize, while the other two doors conceal goats. The contestant chooses one door, but before it is opened, Monty Hall, who knows what is behind each door, opens one of the other two doors to reveal a goat. The contestant is then given the option to switch their choice to the remaining unopened door or stick with their initial choice. The question is: should the contestant switch their choice or stick with their initial choice?
The answer is that the contestant should always switch their choice. This is because the probability of the prize being behind the initially chosen door is only 1/3, whereas the probability of it being behind one of the other two doors is 2/3. When Monty Hall opens one of the other doors to reveal a goat, it doesn't change the fact that the probability of the prize being behind one of the other two doors is 2/3. Therefore, by switching their choice, the contestant increases their chances of winning the prize from 1/3 to 2/3. This counterintuitive result can be proven mathematically, and has been confirmed by numerous simulations and experiments.

I've been stress testing ChatGPT on extremely esoteric metrology and regulatory standards questions...It is hitting about 50/50 so far. Better than me when I was starting as a technician. I don't know how that makes me feel...

Steve Prevette · Apr 17, 2023

Let's just say my first job interview was with Admiral Rickover. That was an experience. I was selected.

Hyman Rickover Interview Techniques (businessinsider.com)

Bev D · Apr 18, 2023

AllTheThings said:
I figure an interviewer is either looking to see how I would find an answer to the question and is looking at process /approach (good interviewer)

That’s what I do with this question. Getting the right answer isn’t the point. It’s the interviewees thought process that i am probing. I also tell them that so they don’t sweat getting the right answer and settle down to think about the situation…

Mike S. · Apr 18, 2023

Randy said:
Ilost on Jeopardy baby......

Weird Al?

Miner · Apr 18, 2023

Mike S. said:
Weird Al?

Weird Al's I Lost on Jeopardy

Stupid Interview Questions

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Tidge

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Randy

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