[jessicas_rabbit]

When hosting technical interviews, I deliberately lead with this type of question before we get into high-effort questions. Many candidates will immediately reveal knowledge gaps which set the tone for the whole interview.

Frequently experienced candidates with interview practice will simply ramble for many minutes - listing extensive contributions in excessive detail. Unfortunately when this happens it’s usually pretty awkward for everyone.

The ideal candidate will answer this question very gracefully and enable us to proceed directly into problem solving questions.

Gotta agree with your point about good/bad interviewers. I want to add that good interviewers/interviewees know how to manage the “risk” of such open-ended questions leading to a pointless interview.