Best and Worst Interview Questions

Two basics - What does the dream job look like? What do you want people to remember/take away from this interview.

I hate being asked the question "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" You have my resume, and you can you see my basic qualifications. If you want to know specifically how I deal with teamwork or multi-tasking, just ask me that. As far as I know, there is just no way for me to answer that question without either sounding really arrogant or really down on myself.

I think a good question is "What was your favorite course in college?" It can also be useful to ask a logic problem, but don't focus on whether or not they got the right answer. Instead, pay attention to how and why they came to that answer.

That Pokemon question is a toughie. I think I would say, "I would choose Pikachu!" That pretty much exhausts my knowledge in that department.

When I was doing admissions interviews at Union I used to like to ask people what their favorite place was in their hometown. It didn't always produce really insightful responses, but you could always tell which kids were really excited about where they're from, or, conversely, who was really excited to go somewhere new.

Starting off an interview with "Tell me about yourself" can be pretty mean if the person isn't super confident, but most people tend to run with it, so it usually produced decent results.

I went to a college interview (one of many) back in the day, but this one stands out. The interviewer just sat there for a while looking at me, and then said "What do you know about death?"

In my (way too) long experience as a middle manager I've learned that I get the most useful info on an applicant by using the "Behavioral Interviewing" technique, which tries to get the interviewee to describe concrete situations. Instead of "Do you work well with others?", which will always get a "Yes", B.I. would suggest something along the lines of "Can you think of a time in your career when a co-worker was not pulling their weight on a joint project? What steps did you take to handle that? Did your approach work?"

The all-time champion worst question has been asked of me in every interview I've ever had: "What are your weaknesses?" I see this question as an intelligence test. There is only one correct answer: "I'm a workoholic."

While interviewing candidates for our school district's superintendent position I asked Barbara Walters' famous question: "If you could be a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" It took the seriousness out of the room like a giant vacuum.

My sons (6 and 3) are obsessed with Pokemon, and the older one likes to quiz me on their statistics, so I would be prepared for the Pokemon question. Coincidentally, I have an interview coming up soon, but I doubt that one will come up.

The worst is easy: "What is your biggest weakness?"

My first thought is always, invariably, "Fuck you is my biggest weakness, asshole."(*) If I'm quick, I can filter that to, "I have no weaknesses." (Pause) "Some people think I'm arrogant."

In my opinion, this even beats the loopy "What kind of houseplant pottery would you most like to be?" type, because no one can actually ask those without realizing how stupid they are. But some people actually expect me to give them a reason not to hire me right there in the interview.

For the best question, I usually sketch up whatever high-level, architecture problem I've been wrestling with on my whiteboard, give a very brief description of it, and ask how someone would approach the problem. If anyone actually solves, in an hour long interview, a problem I've been wrestling with for days or weeks, they're hired! More seriously, I can tell a lot about their thought process by the questions they ask me.

* Channelling Rahm Emmanuel or Tony Soprano is rarely a winning strategy in interviews, alas.

My favorite question I've been asked while visiting grad schools may be "What do you think the next five years in [insert chosen field] will look like?"
Mostly because I was shocked to realize that outside my specific research arena and a few buzzword topics I really couldn't say.
It's good to see if the 'ee has their head up enough to see what's going on in the world of science around them, and if they don't to remind them they should.
A minimum of a five-year world view is necessary to tell if what you are working on now will have any impact by the time you've finished, and coming out of college most people can't plan beyond a semester.

That, or "Which is a better judge of mental ability and why: Chess, Poker, or D&D?"

The best question (grad school interview) was the interviewer looks at my CV and said, "You know topic X. Tell me what you know." He then kept asking more and more in depth questions until I said "I don't know" Afterwards I commented that no one else had bothered to check that I actually know anything. He responded that the whole point of that was to get to the point where I didn't know something and see how I responded. He was trying to filter out people who would lie or get offended at the idea that their knowledge has limits. (Really bad things for grad school)

I like to use the question that sounds like it could have a really creative solution but doesn't have an answer, such as "How would you weigh a 747 using only a small swimming pool, a rubber band and a paper clip?"

And then I encourage them to think through it out loud. At least you get a sense of their creative process that way.

My favorite question was "Do you want a new job?"

Explanation - I work in a fairly close knit community and everyone knowing everyone else, was asked that at a job fair I decided to check out...

Worst is also "what are your X biggest faults?". After biting back things like beating my wife & kids, wearing white after Labor Day, etc. I have settled on "Not being able to suffer fools gladly and see if they get the double meaning.

My favorite question to ask people is what do they see as the most interesting science in their field that has nothing to do with what they've worked on.
Worst question I got on a grad school interview "what do you think of the state of women in science?" "uhmm, I think it sucks donkey balls but I know I'm not supposed to complain?"

Also-I would definitely be Mewtwo.

To Nick at #12:

Easy answer: I would get into the pool with the rubber band and paper clip. Then I would use the rubber band to launch the paper clip at a passerby. Having gotten their attention, I would request that they look up the weight of a 747 on Wikipedia while I took a swim.

At the interview for the job i am currently in (Humanities dept lecture position) I was asked "What is truth?"

I don't think I'll be asking that one when I am interviewing candidates next month. But I would like to prepare a few lateral thinking questions. The 747 and a pool one intrigues me :)

The "weaknesses" question evaluates a person's capacity for BS and spin. These are valuable skills in many jobs.

Charlie Kohlhase told me later that his favorite question of the ones he asked me at the interview that got me the position of Mission Planning Engineer on the Voyager Uranus Interstellar Mission was: "How many barbers are there in the United States?"

I gave 2 quick mental back of the envelope calculations -- one based on how often I went to the barber, one based on hoe fast hair grows. Then I pointed out that there's a bureau in Sacramento that knows how many barber licenses they've granted this year, and the known ratio of California to USA population.

Other questions were about the spacecraft itself, why Io is so hot, what was known about Miranda, the Twin Paradox in Special Relativity (I quoted from a Heinlein novel), and so forth. But he liked the question that shows how somebody thinks on their feet.

One that I've used interviewing a software developer is "What's the most interesting bug you've written?". This would generalize well to "What's the stupidest thing you've ever done?", possibly restricted to the area you're interested in.
(The idea is that error detection and recovery are more important (and harder) than the cases where you get it right the first time. A good interviewee would give a short summary of the error, and then go right into the detection and correction process without being prompted; bonus points go to the people who have lessons learned ready as well.)

"What's the most interesting bug you've written?"

I'm stealing that one.

The two that I tend to lean on are (a) "You claim to know [X]. Tell me one thing about [X] that demonstrates that you really do know it" and (b) "What question were you hoping to be asked?"

The worst interview question that a friend of mine, Dr. Philip Hamilton, was asked, for an English Literature tenure-track faculty position was: "You do know that Ezra Pound was antisemitic, don't you?"

Dr. Hamilton's Ph.D. dissertation was on the infleunce of certain French poets on the poetry of Ezra Pound. Of course he knew that Pound was antisemitic, fascist, and psychiatrically confined to avoid jail for the fascism. But, academically, that had NOTHING to do with the infleunce of certain French poets on the poetry of Ezra Pound.

Despite his credentials, Fellowship at Caltech, high quality research and publications, he was in essence beinmg told (and this was confirmed on further discussion) that the Jewish faculty at this university MIGHT feel uncomfortable if Dr. Hamilton were hired after studying an antisemite.

This kind of politically acorrect irrelevance and fear occurred at every interview. So he ditched his academic life, and became award-winning Editor of IEEE Computer.

I am of Jewish descent myself. There are lunatic antisemites on the loose, one recently welcomed back into the Catholic fold by Pope Benedict XVI. But I am disgusted that Dr. Hamilton could not be treated with academic respect.

A really really good interview is no guarantee that you're hired. A really really bad interview is no guarantee that you're not hired. But that's the way to bet.

The most interesting question I've been asked was at an industry job fair in grad school. A recruiter for one of the major oil companies asked me to tell him about the most interesting research article I had read recently.

(From his answer, I think he may have figured out that I wasn't seriously looking for a job in the oil industry...)

Without doubt, my least favorite interview question is "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?".

I've literally bitten my lip to prevent answering: "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" with the answer: "Running this department, and firing your sorry ass."