[risubramanian]

You joke, but I've seen several applications where I've been asked questions like "What achievement are you proudest of?" and "How would you contribute to the diversity of our team?".

Also cover letters cover some of this.

Actually, I wouldn't mind a standardized test like the GRE, where a good score might actually keep your resume from getting thrown out immediately.

[sweetheart]

Maybe I stand alone in feeling this, but I don't see those questions are absurd during an interview. Especially at smaller startups, where early hires are going to be interfacing heavily with the majority of other employees. Maybe this should be filed under things that comprise "culture fit", but I also think it's different than that.

[chucksmash]

I think it's a little odd to ask directly. If you are evaluating an interviewee for "culture fit" as in your example, would you directly ask them "how would you fit into our culture?" or try to evaluate their thought processes, demeanor, etc to determine it for yourself?

Perhaps it's just the context from which this conversation arises and it wouldn't strike me this way otherwise, but asking these questions directly feels a bit too much like college application boilerplate to me.

If a team wants to prioritize a diversity of perspectives, I feel the team should spend the interview trying to understand my perspective, analyze how that compares to their own perspectives, then synthesize the answer to the question themselves rather than just adding a "How will you contribute to a diversity of perspectives?" question.

[raincom]

If there were a standardized Programming GRE, it will end up increasing the competition for jobs thanks to the future Kaplan/Princeton/local training centers. What would companies do then? Start another layer of programming interview on top of this programming GRE. Eventually, we will reach a point where companies don't trust such GRE scores.