[tony20009]

Originally Posted by MDLFCS

1. Design a bicycle for an amputee.

The bike would have an integrated structure behind or in front of it in which the amputee could sit and let someone else control the thing. Conceptually like a tandem bike where the second rider does nothing but sit there.

Originally Posted by MDLFCS

2. If you could eliminate a state out of 50, which one would it be and why?

This is difficult because there are several good candidates: California, Idaho, and Florida.

Florida. Because the state's officials cannot administer an election and because the state's voters cannot elect leaders who know and appoint individuals smart enough to administer an election. We'd spend far less to repair damage from hurricanes. Social Security would again become solvent.

Originally Posted by MDLFCS

3. Why are manhole covers round?

Because the diameter of the cover must always exceed the diameter of the hole over which it is placed. Because there are no sharp edges that can puncture things. Because they can be rolled. Because you don't need to get the edges/corners to line up to fit it in.

[Memphis1]

Originally Posted by Freakazoid

I've never heard of off the wall questions like this...but since I do some of the hiring for my company.... I might have to jump on board with some of these ideas!

If you've never heard of these and can't figure out the answers, I don't suggest being an "evil Hr rep" and asking them to potential hires unless you work for a software development co or a wall at firm.

[Freakazoid]

Originally Posted by Memphis1

If you've never heard of these and can't figure out the answers, I don't suggest being an "evil Hr rep" and asking them to potential hires unless you work for a software development co or a wall at firm.

I've never heard of them, I can figure them out, and I do work for a software development co So these are actually spot on .

I should mention, not trick questions or nasty questions, just questions to get people's thought process.

[dth656]

Originally Posted by Freakazoid

I've never heard of them, I can figure them out, and I do work for a software development co So these are actually spot on .

I should mention, not trick questions or nasty questions, just questions to get people's thought process.

if you really want to be thorough w/ candidates, try some case interviews ala Mckinsey:

http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/how_...interview.aspx

[radix]

Originally Posted by dth656

if you really want to be thorough w/ candidates, try some case interviews ala Mckinsey:

http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/how_...interview.aspx

I do similar things when I interview candidates. I work as a Unix System Engineer, and I'm one of the strongest technically at my company, so I was given the task of conducting technical interviews with candidates to test their problem solving ability. While most of the cases you linked to would be irrelevant in my line of work, I do give people similar problems. Such as:

You get a call during the middle of the night and one of the end users is complaining about a lack of available virtual memory that is impacting performance on a production database machine running Oracle on AIX 6.1. Describe how you would go about determining if there is in fact a system performance issue, and assuming there is, what steps you would take once the the problem had been identified?

Usually, at some point after that I start focusing on more concrete issues, such as throwing out more exact descriptions of the issue, such as:

After monitoring system performance for some time, you see both the pageout rate and the scan rate are both unacceptably high. How do you determine if the pageouts are due to heavy use of file cache or heavy use of application memory? What sort of tunables affect the repage rates for both, and how would change them to favor memory residence of application memory over file cache (persistent memory)? What commands would you use to adjust those tunables?

Etc, etc. I can usually weed out the phonies pretty quickly. The problem is that in my line of work, everyone has their specialties. So I usually ask candidates to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 regarding their strength in a particular category, then ask questions commiserate to their self appraisal.

[radix]

Oh, and after the candidate answers several difficult questions correctly, or otherwise satisfies me that he is a good problem solver by detailing his thought process, my interviews will usually turn toward more casual conversation regarding the profession. This is because even after I know that the candidate knows their subject matter, I still want to gauge their overall interest level, their ability to communicate effectively, etc. Sometimes you learn new things from prospective employees as well, so these conversations can be very interesting.

[Freakazoid]

Originally Posted by radix

Oh, and after the candidate answers several difficult questions correctly, or otherwise satisfies me that he is a good problem solver by detailing his thought process, my interviews will usually turn toward more casual conversation regarding the profession. This is because even after I know that the candidate knows their subject matter, I still want to gauge their overall interest level, their ability to communicate effectively, etc. Sometimes you learn new things from prospective employees as well, so these conversations can be very interesting.

+1 in my line it's more about the other aspects, and a little less technical knowledge/understanding.

If can you problem solve, think, communicate, and have some decent intelligence... you're usually a leg up

[Hawkeye]

Meh, shows how much I know about geography. I thought PR was considered a "state" now as well.

Doesn't change my answer though since DC is not in any state.

The good thing is no interview I will ever go to will have that question. All questions not pertaining to me usually involve mathematics, not geography or (heaven forbid) history.