The American view: Are we asking the right questions in job interviews?

Every business book and article I’ve read on corpo interviewing since the 90s has insisted that all questions must be totally abstracted from reality. The ideal interview should strive to imitate the ancient Greek philosophers’ paradise of pure rationality. For example, a correct interview exchange – according to the businessy-business purists – would go something like this:

Interviewer: “Why did you leave your last job?”

Applicant: “I’ve achieved my goals at (company) and now I’m looking for new challenges that come with growth and better rewards.”

While I understand the use of weaselly corpo-speak in this exchange, the academically “correct” answer doesn’t convey any useful – or accurate! – information. Instead, it demonstrates that the applicant can code-switch on-demand. It’s a challenge-response authentication exercise, and nothing more. I find fake questions like these to be tedious and insulting.

If you’ve read my book Why Are You Here?: A Curmudgeon’s Guide to IT Interviewing [2] you know that I delight in shaking up interviews regardless of which side of the table I’m on. For a question like the one above, I’d offer an answer like the one I gave after I parted ways with Yahoo! Broadcast:

“Our new owner was hemorrhaging money,” I said. “And its stock was in freefall. HQ was desperate to show profitability, so it slashed 60% of our division. I think this demonstrates why the business was cratering, but that all took place at echelons far removed from my reality.”

To be fair to the to the businessy-business purists, my answer to the canned question doesn’t address the code-switch challenge at all … and that’s deliberate. Instead, I believe that my answer displays candor, integrity, and a willingness to tackle real problems. If those are characteristics that the hiring authority values, then we’ll probably work well together.

 If speaking truth-to-power is repulsive to my interviewer, then we we’ll probably get along like an orphanage on fire. Better for both of us to know that before extending or considering an offer.