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Impossible Interviews

James Shaw
Have you ever been faced with an interview question that seemed impossible to answer?


Mine was delivered on the premises of a 'world class' engineering company. "How would you ensure that a project is completed on time?"


My mind raced from the general to the particular - If I knew the answer to that I would be a billionaire! - Strikes, bad weather, supplier failure, poor specifications etc. Probably no words came out as the interviewer started to drop hints, "It begins with a 'P', it ends in 'N', it has four letters." "Plan?" I say. "Exactly!" says he. 'Idiot' thinks I.


In retrospect perhaps it was a test to see if I was suitable to develop for senior management - the 'big picture' people. "We will deliver better value, we will be smarter!" But how? Engineers, small-minded, always bothered about the details!


Needless to say, I didn't get that job. Perhaps just as well.
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    Andy,

    The 'paper exercise' is definitely a civil service system, it is how they demonstrate that 'due process' has been followed. An interview session 'has' to be held anyway and if a few other staff want to have their applications rejected, so be it! The desired candidate has probably been doing the job for a year 'on substitution' anyway so will get all the bonus points for experience too! As an internal candidate the trick is to find the 'real' vacancies.


    The danger of being smarter than the boss is that they can be very resentful, really, really resentful. Even if one is lucky to have a sensible boss one can then be trapped in the job. Why would the boss promote the best worker out of the job? How does the lower-skilled boss know the relative ranking of the junior against others with that skill? I think these are valid questions for a 'junior' to consider, get out while the going is good. Our management guru thought that a manager should do the jobs that the staff would do if they had the time, i.e. thinking ahead or devising better ways of doing things. If you are busy draining the cellar it is the boss' job to turn off the tap! I'm not sure that I completely buy into the continous development model that the delegation tree is based on. Some people are just better at some things than other people and those other people might be better at doing other jobs. When I first started working we had a very good group leader. However in the laboratory, which was a small part of his domain, there was a graveyard of in-house designed equipment that didn't work. Being curious I had a look at this stuff. It was clearly designed by a total incompetent and would never have worked. (It used open-collector logic, before it had been invented, logic gates had their outputs joined together and sort of fought it out). As you might have guessed the 'designer' was our group leader - he had been promoted beyond his level of incompetence - lousy designer, great leader. Thinking back that was a very good company with lots of very good ways of doing things. I caught it at its best but didn't like living in that area so moved 400 miles. Technology suddenly changed. US legislation broke up the parent group. The new owner was a rising star that went super-nova, burnt out and then went bust. (Every place that I have worked at closed down after I left!).
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    Andy,

    The 'paper exercise' is definitely a civil service system, it is how they demonstrate that 'due process' has been followed. An interview session 'has' to be held anyway and if a few other staff want to have their applications rejected, so be it! The desired candidate has probably been doing the job for a year 'on substitution' anyway so will get all the bonus points for experience too! As an internal candidate the trick is to find the 'real' vacancies.


    The danger of being smarter than the boss is that they can be very resentful, really, really resentful. Even if one is lucky to have a sensible boss one can then be trapped in the job. Why would the boss promote the best worker out of the job? How does the lower-skilled boss know the relative ranking of the junior against others with that skill? I think these are valid questions for a 'junior' to consider, get out while the going is good. Our management guru thought that a manager should do the jobs that the staff would do if they had the time, i.e. thinking ahead or devising better ways of doing things. If you are busy draining the cellar it is the boss' job to turn off the tap! I'm not sure that I completely buy into the continous development model that the delegation tree is based on. Some people are just better at some things than other people and those other people might be better at doing other jobs. When I first started working we had a very good group leader. However in the laboratory, which was a small part of his domain, there was a graveyard of in-house designed equipment that didn't work. Being curious I had a look at this stuff. It was clearly designed by a total incompetent and would never have worked. (It used open-collector logic, before it had been invented, logic gates had their outputs joined together and sort of fought it out). As you might have guessed the 'designer' was our group leader - he had been promoted beyond his level of incompetence - lousy designer, great leader. Thinking back that was a very good company with lots of very good ways of doing things. I caught it at its best but didn't like living in that area so moved 400 miles. Technology suddenly changed. US legislation broke up the parent group. The new owner was a rising star that went super-nova, burnt out and then went bust. (Every place that I have worked at closed down after I left!).
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