Games Interviewers Play - employee recruitment - Statistical Data Included

HR Magazine, Jan, 2001 by Martha Frase-Blunt

Do brainteasers, puzzles and two-way mirrors really help spot the right candidate?

Mike and Todd have $21 between them. Mike has $20 more than Todd. How much money has Mike, and how much money has Todd?

So went one question Microsoft Corp. posed to IT professional Steve Dobbs in a job interview he recalls as one of the most grueling of his career. And, no fractions were involved in the answer. What has this to do with filling a telephone tech support position?

"At the time, I didn't see anything in the question that was relevant to the job," says Dobbs. "But in retrospect, I think it does bear some resemblance to technical support situations, in that there are many times when all the easy answers to a technical problem don't work, and you have to go back and re-evaluate the assumptions you are working with, and essentially throw out the ground rules."

Throwing a Mensa-style question at a candidate has become so common in the high-tech hiring process that many recruits bone up on methodologies they might need to meet the challenge. Many web sites for job seekers such as The Student Advantage (www.studentadvantage.com ), Jobcircle (www.jobcircle.com ) and Vault.com (www.vault.com), post tips on how to beat the brainteaser, counseling them to break it down, think out loud, never go for the obvious answer, don't spend too much time crunching numbers, etc.

Though Dobbs got the answer, he didn't get the job. "I talked my way through my thought processes, letting them know what I was thinking and how I was eliminating or zeroing in on possible answers," he said. "They looked pleased--in a 'he figured out the trap' kind of way--when I said that the only way to answer the question was to forget about the 'no fractions' rule." (The solution was $20.50 and 50 cents. Units of currency technically are whole numbers.)

Financial services employers also enjoy pitching curveballs. Since it's thought that investment bankers and other finance professionals should be able to work well under pressure, many interviewers believe that tossing a puzzle at candidates is a good way to test their battle-readiness. Marketing companies also like to see how candidates handle a tough challenge, like designing a marketing plan for a touch-tone phone--for an 1850s audience. But those "out-there" interview questions more often face candidates for jobs at the cutting edges of technology, such as dot-com, software design and engineering jobs.

Try These on for Size

Quite often, the question is simply an old-fashioned logic problem:

You are faced with two doors. One door leads to your job offer, and the other leads to the exit. In front of each door is a guard. One guard always tells the truth. The other always lies. You can ask a single question to both guards to help you decide which door is the correct one. What will you ask?

Others seem to call for a wild "guesstimate":

How many gallons of white house paint are sold in the U.S. every year?

And still others border on the truly bizarre:

You are in solitary confinement. It is Friday afternoon and you absolutely must have a cigarette. The only person who can give you one is the guard outside your cell. What do you do? (For the answers, see "How Did You Do?" on page 114.)

Create Tension or Calm Nerves?

"Some of those puzzler questions are excellent," says Orv Owens, a Washington-based consultant and psychologist who conducts corporate workshops on effective interviewing. "Interviewers will use these questions to gauge response time and the candidate's ability to think on his or her feet."

The philosophy is not new; the infamous interview techniques of the late Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program, have become the stuff of legend. He was known to offer interviewees a chair from which he had sawed several inches off one or two of the legs. "It was difficult because it was a shiny chair," he once explained to Diane Sawyer on "60 Minutes," the CBS magazine show. "They had to maintain their wits about them as they answered questions while sliding off the chair. ... I was trying to draw out of them what they had potentially in them."

On the other hand, some companies use games or puzzles to put candidates at ease. ZEFER, a leading Boston-based Internet and consulting firm, will hand candidates a box of Legos and tell them they have five minutes to build anything they want, and then talk about it. "The Lego test was received quite well," notes Susan Perry, ZEFER's vice president of talent. "It sparked some great conversations and insights that challenged and intrigued people."

Games and challenges also can help interviewers overcome a tendency to make snap judgments about candidates too early in the meeting. Tossing an unexpected question into the mix can bring a new focus for both prospect and interviewer.

"Good candidates really love it--it's a Rubik's Cube for them," says John Putzier, SPHR, president of FirStep Inc., a performance improvement, training and consulting firm in Prospect, Pa. He also is the author of the forthcoming book Get Weird: 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work (AMACOM, 2001). "A lot of companies do raise their eyebrows at approaches that seem to create barriers to employment, but for many positions, questions that deviate from the norm can offer a realistic job preview, requiring just the competencies a worker would need on the job."