Companies turn to quirky interview questions — even after Google says they don’t work; Washington Post, 3/29/16

Jena McGregor, Washington Post; Companies turn to quirky interview questions — even after Google says they don’t work:

"Now, however, Google actually urges its hiring managers not to use such questions, according to a book released last year, "Work Rules," by Google's head of "people operations," Laszlo Bock. In it, he writes that they aren't actually worth much.

How a candidate performs on such questions "is at best a discrete skill that can be improved by practice, eliminating their utility for assessing candidates," he writes. "At worst, they rely on some trivial bit of information or insight that is withheld from the candidate, and serve primarily to make the interviewer feel clever or self-satisfied. They have little if any ability to predict how candidates will perform in a job."

Bock admits in his book that some questions like this have been used at Google, and may continue to be, though he says that "we do everything we can to discourage this, as it's really just a waste of everyone's time." When they do pop up, he writes, senior leaders "ignore the answers to these questions."

Instead, Google now bases its interview process on assessment methods that research has shown to be most predictive of performance, Bock writes. Technical hires go through some kind of test of their ability to do things like write code or design algorithms. And then the company asks "behavioral" ("tell me about a time when...") or "situational" ("what would you do if...") structured interview questions that help assess things like a candidate's cognitive ability or conscientiousness."