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Social skills vs. Technically correct
2018.05.04 22:03:10 CEST
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This week I was in an interesting discussion about interview
questions and processes: many companies have recruitment teams which
are responsible for conducting phone screens to verify minimal
knowledge requirements. These phone screens usually follow a pre-
prepared script, questions and expected answers, which a recruiter,
even if unknowledgeable on the subject, can use. Now suppose there
is a multiple-choice question which has a somewhat-correct answer
almost everyone believes to be correct, but specialists know to be
not-completely-correct. How should these specialists answer the
question?
If I were ever in this position, my answer would be along the lines
of: "I think you are looking for answer X, but that might not be
correct under this, this and that situation". This gives the
recruiter the answer they are expecting, but still allows me to add
more information and provide a truly correct answer.
The downside of this way out is it requires extra skills on the
specialist side: to be able to detect the "expected answer" and
differentiate from the "correct answer"; then social skills to
provide the answer in a way that won't cause disagreements. The
counter argument is this interview method is adding burden onto
people who are more knowledgeable and this seems unfair.
We ran out of time for our discussion and I haven't had time to go
through the arguments again and think the problem out. I hope to do
so this week.