Tuesday, September 22, 2009

In what appears to be a living reenactment of M.C. Escher’s greatest works, I’ve been wracking my noggin recently for the ultimate brain teaser to deploy on job applicants. It’s a need that sprung out of an interview last week, when I endorsed a candidate in lavish, glowing terms, only to garner looks from both the Chief and Boss G normally reserved for adults who dribble all over themselves in a jungle gym connected to a McDonald’s. At, like, a Walmart.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this species of question firsthand: how many quarters would you need to stack to reach the height of the Empire State Building? How much did the Titanic weigh? How do you make funeral arrangements for a dozen mimes? All three are ridiculous, really, but let them simmer for a bit as you formulate your solutions. Okay! Time’s up. The answers, respectively:

“I don’t know, but if I had that many quarters, I wouldn’t be sitting in this goddamn interview.”

“Doesn’t make a shit of a difference because–guess what?–it sunk.”

“They’ve already locked themselves in invisible boxes. Just drape a tarp over them.”

You may have gathered, at this point, how much I loathe these types of questions. They’re insipid. Not because the topics themselves are boring, by any means, but because they seem irrelevant, possibly even a little irreverent, given the context. How many pins could you fit, say, into the head of an angel? Who knows? Who cares? Enough pins to attempt an answer compelling enough to earn a paycheck.

Understand, though, the inherent value of these questions–the ability to suss out how a candidate thinks–is what was revelatory lately. Whereas previously even the mere mention of such inquiries would’ve met a raised brow from me, along with an upturned nose, elevated pinky, and a hired chauffeur with his very own jar of Grey Poupon, I now realize why they exist.

There’s got to be another way to coax out a candidate’s thought process, however, and this brings us back to the task at hand: constructing a question both devious and classy. The contingencies will have to be considered, of course. What if I raised the mime issue and got the very answer we discussed earlier, word for word? I suppose I’d ask a follow-up question.

“Let’s pretend your interviewer had a blog you weren’t supposed to read or, even worse, quote in public. How would you make the situation less awkward?”

The best possible answer would be sitting in utter silence for the remaining 45 minutes.