Ask HN: Fake job interviews in NYC?

Can you identify a few places you interviewed with? Also, are you using a recruiter?

I'm going to try to limit my response:

I don't consider (1) to be "fake" in the sense that thought-provoking questions aren't meant to be fake. I like asking open-ended questions because I want to be sure that I am dealing with creative people who can think on the spot. In some industries (e.g. finance), being able to quickly think of a solution is important. And yes, I am much more impressed when people can answer in ways that I did not think about (and I've landed offers at many places precisely because I was able to think of clever solutions that the interviewer didn't think about beforehand)

kshcho 5469 days ago

Agreed that (1) is not by definition intelligence gathering. It's a fine line, but it should be pretty clear if you reflect carefully on what was asked.

Using finance as an example (since veyron mentioned it), it's one thing to ask an interesting brain teaser, or even, for example, the candidate's perspective on how a market will evolve over the next 5 years (e.g., natural gas). It's another to try to ask them what trading strategies they've used (which they could bring up more subtly by saying something like "what are some interesting trading strategies for natural gas you think could work"), or how they interact with their clients.

It's perfectly ok to ask about which trading strategies will work, if you are being employed as a strategist. It's also perfectly ok to ask about how they interact with clients. In both cases, a person is being entrusted with the firm's assets or public image, both of which should be carefully guarded.

As a hedge fund, you wouldn't want to bring on a strategist unless you had some clear idea about the trader's process, and in that discussion you must analyze a strategy. Likewise, when you entrust someone to deal with firm clients, you trust that the person will not jeopardize relationships.

No, I didn't use recruiters based on the fact a lot of them are unscrupulous. I applied to Web product mgmt/project mgmt positions listed in the job boards.

I know the difference between case questions and brainteasers. However, its an entirely different story when a candidate can sense he's getting strung along. (And, no I am not an overly sensitive/emotional person.) The type of questions are not open-ended and nor aligned to measuring my skillset, but the queries are very pinpoint/detailed to deny these are hypothetical. Further, a simple/vague answer will bring "can you elaborate further?" Or, better yet, regarding a possible solution to an ecommerce issue, the head of operations pushes an Apple MBA in front of me and says, "you can type in the URL." Having researched these companies prior to the interview, and now in hindsight it is very obvious they were not only after a different vantage point, but to obtain "needle in the haystack" piece of compelling information.

Clever answers/solutions have rewarded job offers in the past. But I am a bit pessimistic having witnessed some rather interesting job interviews in Manhattan.

I think its unfair to criticize NYC just because of a few poor interview experiences.

But back on point: can you give a specific question that you felt crossed the line? I'm curious because I've never felt that I've been asked such a probing question before.

(and yes, I'm not going to deny that a lot of companies string candidates along, especially if they believe they have strong offers)

Point taken. Its probably just dumb luck.

Like any interview, I am told about their problem and how they have proceeded into uncharted territory. And I am asked, "What would you do to improve our issue/problem?" As it appears, I have worked on a similar issue. Apart from wanting to know the specifics of how I did it, they want to know about the anticipated risks and how to mediate them, the barriers I ran into, how to resolve those, which tools I used, etc.

All of those questions seem reasonable.

Put in other terms: they threw you a situation that you would probably have to handle if you were working there, and then asked what you would do in their situation.

I do this a lot when I come across problems because it lets me see how others think (I of course ask the questions after having solved the problem myself). And each of the answers to the questions have useful implications:

- Anticipated risks: have you thoroughly analyzed the possibilities, and do you understand the implications of your decision?

- Barriers: did you actually try this? [If you've tried to put a solution together yourself, you will come across most of the barriers anyway]

- Tools: did you use a tool with the constraints in mind? (one time, a person suggested that I take a million-line CSV file, put it into excel, and use the interface to find the sum of a column of numbers.)

It's easy to assume that, with a specific situation, the company may not have found a solution to the problem. However, more likely than not the developer you are interviewing with actually was the one who had to hobble together a solution, and he wants to see if you could do something similar if it happened to you.

The reason why I asked about which companies you interviewed with: many types of jobs in NYC are either client-facing or front-desk-support, both of which require mission-critical temperament and mental agility. You can't blame EC2 for failures ...

For this line of questioning, why not just throw me into an interview presentation? Your rationale sounds plausible--thanks for taking the time to making it salient. Time will tell what is true. I am looking forward to spotting whether any of my pointers were used in the site re-launch.

kshcho 5469 days ago

I won't say it's common practice, but I'm aware of people at a few companies (not just startups, but some Fortune 500 ones as well) who use "interviews" to gather competitive intelligence and ideas.

Given your (1), it sounds like you might have run into that at least once. What industry / role were you talking to them about?

I had an interview where they invited me to the next round as long as I prepared a presentation on the competitive landscape and state of the industry which only revealed my Powerpoint deck skills. I got the job. But then again, it wasn't in New York

prodigal_erik 5469 days ago

Getting intel on rivals reminds me of how my manager occasionally asks network and security admin candidates to describe the topology at their current employer. The only acceptable answer is "no."