JobsBlog Rewind: Question Authority
All recruiters have different theories on how much to “prepare” their candidates the morning of the interview. There’s only one tip I like to give candidates when they come in, and it’s really more common sense than inside information: Question us.
As Kenji pointed out, most of those pesky Microsoft logic questions have been retired. That being said, it’s important to realize every candidate will absolutely get questions to which they don't know the answer. This is intentional and speaks to one of the constant challenges Microsoft employees face: dealing with ambiguity. On a daily basis as an employee, you’ll be put in spots where you don’t know the answer (or maybe there isn’t even a right answer).
Are you the kind of person who guesses when faced with something you don’t know? Are you going to build a response based upon what you think they are looking for? Or are you comfortable asking clarifying questions?
In interview settings it’s easy to be so consumed with trying to impress that one answers before thinking things through completely. This is especially true with technical questions that have more than one route to the same destination.
What we are looking for here is someone who understands "framing the debate." Is the question too broad? Ask the interviewer to clarify! Not sure you heard the person correctly? Ask for it again! Make sure that you have parsed things down to a point where you are comfortable answering as an authority.
Asking clarifying questions won’t cover for you if you don’t know something we are looking for, but it will make sure you are not being penalized for misunderstanding a question and it will show the interviewer that you are an attentive listener and interested in delivering the right solution.
Does this make sense? Or would you like me to clarify? :-)
- Matt
The JobsBlog Rewind post was originally published in 2008.
5 Comments
James said:
One of my strongest interview memories was an interview (for a place on an undergraduate CS degree, back in 1997) in which I was asked a few technical questions, one of which involved an algorithm for finding the 3 lowest numbers from a list. My answer was better in the average case but worse in the worst case (where the data is monotonic), the interviewer said his was better (twice as slow in the average case, twice as fast in the worst).
The interview for the course I ended up on was better, involving a math/logic problem (applying proof by induction to a geometry problem, which was an interesting twist) then talking for a few minutes to a guy I later learned had invented his own programming language at MIT, then passed the design on to a guy called Ritchie. I rather liked that interview, actually: I do like that kind of puzzle, so I'm a little sorry to hear they've faded away at Microsoft!
Matt said:
Algorithm questions and math questions are still around to be sure, as they can reveal great clues about one's technical foundation. It's questions like "How many ping pong balls can fit in a 747" that we've tried move away from as there are more relevant ways to get at your core problem solving skills.
Mike O. said:
The problem with puzzles is that they can't be used find out what the person knows. They can only be used to find out what the person does not know.
I actually think they show more about the interviewer than the interviewee.
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