Posted on 06/22/2013 8:31:47 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
You can stop counting how many golfballs will fit in a schoolbus now.
Google has admitted that the headscratching questions it once used to quiz job applicants (How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? Why are manhole covers round?) were utterly useless as a predictor of who will be a good employee.
We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time, Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. They dont predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.
A list of Google questions compiled by Seattle job coach Lewis Lin, and then read by approximately everyone on the entire Internet in one form or another, included these humdingers:
How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco
How many times a day does a clocks hands overlap?
A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
Bock says Google now relies on more quotidian means of interviewing prospective employees, such as standardizing interviews so that candidates can be assessed consistently, and behavioral interviewing, such as asking people to describe a time they solved a difficult problem. Its also giving much less weight to college grade point averages and SAT scores.
(PS: The answer is 500,000)
Not quite as momentous as confirmation that the government is indeed copying all our emails, but it’s always nice to check another thing off the “I knew it all along” list.
$200 Billion — because I hate Seattle.
Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco
Free — make sure all the exist are destroyed and nuke the site from orbit: population evacuation complete.
How many times a day does a clocks hands overlap?
23 or 24, basically once an hour, it depends on if you're counting 000-2359:59, or 0000-2400.
A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
The Federal Reserve inflated money in that time so much it became worthless.
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
Use my now proportionally superhuman strength to shatter the blender with a punch — it only said my mass was reduced, not my strength.
Dang! I knew that one. I should be working at Apple.
i knew that one but obama's head is round and it fits in a round orifice.
They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.
***Precisely.
How they go about answering the question, not the particular answer they give, can tell you (possibly) a lot about the interviewees as future employees.....
DOJ probably said brainteasers were discriminatory.
Manager: What is your biggest weakness?
Interviewee: My honesty.
Manager: I don't consider honesty a weakness.
Interviewee: I don't give a crap what you think.
That’s not the answer they’ve looking for, even though it’s truer. The manhole cover is round because the manhole is round.
You could really measure the "height" of a nickle two ways. When you lay a nickel on a table, its thickness is its height, and would be well below the blades of most blenders I've ever seen. You could simply stand there, light up a smoke and enjoy the breeze.
You could really measure the "height" of a nickle two ways. When you lay a nickel on a table, its thickness is its height, and would be well below the blades of most blenders I've ever seen. You could simply stand there, light up a smoke and enjoy the breeze.
How many tight ends can the Patriots go through in one offseason? (And no, Tebow doesn't count.)
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