On the contrary: I like the idea, but for context, my most recent HN comment contained:
> [...] That said, I do find [it] hard in interviews [to talk] about past experience[s] and prefer to just be given a web application riddled with every type of bug and try to bingo them all in the time given to show that I understand them all. That one was my favorite interview.
Now I see johnqian suggesting to ask interviewees how to best see their skills, and it sounds great. If the interviewer doesn't have something like this on hand, we could still go into different types of bugs that they care about.
I've also had interviews that went terribly, particularly when no technical details were asked at all for a technical position (e.g. a manager just asking the standard questions where you need to give platitude answers, such as "why are you specifically excited to intern with Vodafone", methinks: "because I want that degree and you were the only option I could think of within 45 minutes commuting"... but one can't say that so I made something up.. he probed further on that... it went downhill from there), so being able to steer away from that sounds great.
But it might also be that I would feel unprepared for such a question and give a total non-answer, helping neither party.
Asking this in an email ahead of time might be better, though then the effect you're suggesting might be even stronger.
Edit: I'm not the downvoter, to be clear. I think you raise a good point even if I am not sure whether it would necessarily be that way.
> [...] That said, I do find [it] hard in interviews [to talk] about past experience[s] and prefer to just be given a web application riddled with every type of bug and try to bingo them all in the time given to show that I understand them all. That one was my favorite interview.
Now I see johnqian suggesting to ask interviewees how to best see their skills, and it sounds great. If the interviewer doesn't have something like this on hand, we could still go into different types of bugs that they care about.
I've also had interviews that went terribly, particularly when no technical details were asked at all for a technical position (e.g. a manager just asking the standard questions where you need to give platitude answers, such as "why are you specifically excited to intern with Vodafone", methinks: "because I want that degree and you were the only option I could think of within 45 minutes commuting"... but one can't say that so I made something up.. he probed further on that... it went downhill from there), so being able to steer away from that sounds great.
But it might also be that I would feel unprepared for such a question and give a total non-answer, helping neither party.
Asking this in an email ahead of time might be better, though then the effect you're suggesting might be even stronger.
Edit: I'm not the downvoter, to be clear. I think you raise a good point even if I am not sure whether it would necessarily be that way.