I’ve just started doing practical interviews. I basically get really young people with little overall experience and I just want to know if they can do common technical tasks.
So one question is to literally have them explain how to tighten a bolt. One person failed.
To be fair, that’s a very open ended question. I mean, what kind of bolt are we talking about? A standard lag bolt? If so you don’t tighten it! That’d be a trick question! You tighten the nut. Same thing applies with car wheel bolts. Tricky tricky!
Is it a hex bolt that also has a cross head? How tight are we talking?
I’m just going to assume bolts of lightning and Usain Bolt are off the table.
Not really in a bolt tightenning domain, but I have done technical interviews for a lot of devs including junior ones, and them asking all those questions about the task is something I would consider a very good thing.
At least in my domain the first step of doing a good job is figuring out exactly what needs to be done and in what conditions, so somebody who claims to have some experience who when faced with a somewhat open ended question like this just jumps into the How without first trying to figure out the details of the What is actually a bad sign (or they might just be nervous, so this by itself is not an absolute pass or fail thing).
I’ve just started doing practical interviews. I basically get really young people with little overall experience and I just want to know if they can do common technical tasks.
So one question is to literally have them explain how to tighten a bolt. One person failed.
To be fair, that’s a very open ended question. I mean, what kind of bolt are we talking about? A standard lag bolt? If so you don’t tighten it! That’d be a trick question! You tighten the nut. Same thing applies with car wheel bolts. Tricky tricky!
Is it a hex bolt that also has a cross head? How tight are we talking?
I’m just going to assume bolts of lightning and Usain Bolt are off the table.
Not really in a bolt tightenning domain, but I have done technical interviews for a lot of devs including junior ones, and them asking all those questions about the task is something I would consider a very good thing.
At least in my domain the first step of doing a good job is figuring out exactly what needs to be done and in what conditions, so somebody who claims to have some experience who when faced with a somewhat open ended question like this just jumps into the How without first trying to figure out the details of the What is actually a bad sign (or they might just be nervous, so this by itself is not an absolute pass or fail thing).
The only thing I know about the procedure for tightening Usain Bolt is that I am not part of performing it.
I did actually make the mistake of asking just “which way do you turn a screw” once and the person had the sense to ask “to tighten or loosen it?”
Would you have accepted “righty tighty lefty loosely”?
Yeah but if they don’t show which is which I ask them to show too.
Almost everyone gets screw turning right, it just weeds out a few people who say the right things in emails.