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"Do you have experience with the Microsoft Word?"
I didn't start lying at this point, although I did giggle a little to myself quietly at the poor grammar coming from an HR drone. I politely pointed out that, with a Bachelor's in Computer Science and two years of corporate IT experience, I had written many English papers, many lab reports, and many corporate reports in Microsoft Word."Have you ever taught a class in Microsoft Excel?"
I still remember the exact moment that I first lied during an interview. This was it. At this point in my career, I had more than 30 credits of teaching experience in higher ed. I had taught classes in databases, Java, C++, and even algebra. I even had a Master's in Computer Science at this point.No, technically, I had never taught a class in Excel. What did I say? What do you think I said?
"Yes--twice."
"Imagine an infinite chess board."
Oh, please! You can probably tell how dismayed I was upon hearing this question. This was supposedly from a company that specializes in interviewing (*cough*, Karat, *cough*).It was an algorithms question, and you're tasked with figuring out the algebraic formula for the location of a knight, or some such non-sense.
Business value? 0.
Easy to grade? Yes.
I would argue that actually playing chess with someone and asking them to explain their thinking would give you more insight into their understanding of algorithms. But that kind of thing is time-consuming, and it's much easier to ask someone to imagine an infinite chess board.
I don't fill out the stupid tests anymore
For my last round of job searches, I took about 8 hours of online "entrance" exams, ranging from Karat to TekSystems. They range from basic Java questions which are easily googl'able, to useless "infinite chess board" puzzles, to obscure details of the Java 8 DateTime API.
If you don't cheat and plug the code examples into your IDE or just google for answers, you'll get a low score and the non-technical recruiter will think you're an idiot.
And how many interviews did I get from those exams? Zero. Although I did get a lot of compliments on how highly I scored.
I would have been better off writing cover letters or making more phone calls. Never again.
Misleading Job Descriptions
One time, I got handed a BlackBerry for off-hours support a few weeks into a job for a certain cable company. I ask, "What is this?" They said, "It's your turn." It wasn't on the job description, and they conventionally forgot to mention it during the interview.
You realize the job description isn't thought through very well, and/or poorly worded (sometimes intentionally), and if that's gonna keep you from even interviewing from the job you want, well, two can play that game.
Bad interviewers
Let's be honest: most of are us are bad interviewers. We've never got any training, so we cargo-cult-it and just ask questions we were asked. At one startup I worked for, we went through (i.e., hired and fired) two employees in the year since I started!
"What would you do if you were 6-inches tall and were thrown in a blender that's gonna turn on in 15 seconds?"
Those questions were pretty popular in the 90s and early 00's, but thankfully people have mostly stopped, although I still get the occasional question about buildings with infinite floors and such nonsense.
Conclusion
I feel like the problem has gotten worse, with many more toolkits, buzzwords, and technologies than even 10 years ago. (Do you know Kafka? You should know Kafka. And node.js)You can get certainly get a job not knowing these things, but not the good ones.
I think the problem is deep enough, with bad interviewers asking bad questions, that the only solution is for everyone to lie. Eventually, once the amount of lies reaches a critical turning point, interviewers will need to be trained to ask better questions.
