On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 20:45 +0100, David Restall - System Administrator
wrote:
> I remember, years ago, going for an interview and being asked some really
> taxing questions and I didnt know many of the answers - I felt that the
> questions had deliberately been chosen to avoid my skill set.  I gave
> short, 'I don't know, I'd need to find out, look it up etc.' answers.
> I got the contract, basically because my boss to be admitted that I was
> the only candidate who didn't try to b*sh*t my way out of the situation.
> When I later asked him about the questions, he admitted he didn't know
> the answers either, he'd looked for obscure questions on the web and
> used them.

FWIW in interviews I've been part of we ask questions that we consider
reasonable, but at the same time increase in difficulty (to a point
where we'd have trouble answering 100%). The idea is to figure out two
things:

1. how far does the candidate's knowledge go? Nobody knows everything.
2. how does the candidate deal with "not knowing" something? Sometimes
this is the more important thing to figure out. Some will completely try
to bullsh*t their way through it, others handle it honestly. One got
angry and banged his fists on the table...

On the other end, I've had interviews where they asked technical
questions (how would you build a D flip-flop out of gates). Others had
me fill out personality profiles. One even had me do a sort of
intelligence test (word association, logic, even basic math problems). 

Another interview basically consisted of me chatting with the
interviewer about the computer industry, it was like two buds just
hanging out, only thing missing was the camp fire and beer, most
enjoyable interview I've ever had. I ended up getting that job!

TTYL

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