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But then, I came across the case interview questions for management consulting. This case interviews were extremely tough and I remember studying for 4 weeks just for the interview. So, I do believe that there are concrete, credible interviews outside of engineering. Management Consulting and I-banking interviews are to types of careers that do have tough, yet very technical interviews.
I do like the questions you suggested. I would add one more: Give them a real live case. Give them a problem that you just had to solve or deal with a client, and see if they can solve it right in front of you. If they're able to do it, then there's a high possibility that they can do their job.
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I definitely agree that case interviews are useful for consulting, specifically, but would wonder how much a case interview style would make sense across different roles.
I think it tests a very specific set of knowledge for the consulting industry. Namely, a lot of the industry is about drilling into things (qualitatively and quantitatively), doing research, and presenting stuff back. I'd argue that it's a subtype of my Part 3 set of questions? So for the consulting industry it's great, but for a nontechnical role like a hiring manager, I'd rather just sit them down in front of a computer and see them work, rather than asking them questions.
Just the thought off the top of my head...
I think the trouble with most interviews is they have a predictable pattern that can be investigated beforehand. An interviewer wants to test a candidate not only on their knowledge base, but also their ability to grow (raw intelligence). I think testing raw intelligence requires putting them outside their comfort zone by creating novel situations the candidate doesn't have full experience with. Novel situations are only novel to the extent of the usage of that question. Thus, it's hard for this to be scalable and normalize between candidates (e.g. Google needs to be able to pick from a subset of questions to ask their candidates, but these questions must be carefully picked to each candidate and refreshed constantly). I think the challenge is equivalent to having to write a GMAT test that adapts to each user and returns a consistent score... every week.
Good post, as always. There's something worth noting that wasn't mentioned. It's not just about asking the right questions, it's also about having people who know how to interpret the responses. One of the challenges for startups is that while you might have 5-6 engineers who know what a good engineer looks like, you might have 1 or in some cases 0 people in the company who have a firm understanding of what a good BD, sales, marketing, or operations person looks like. Even having access to the right level of rigor won't necessarily help that company identify the right person and whether he / she is competent.
One thing I've seen work well is to have the Board or some trusted advisors / friends who are familiar with what skill and competence in the aforementioned fields looks like be an integral part of the skills portion of the interview. The core team has to make the call on culture, but there's simply no substitute for having a skilled marketer, biz dev person, or salesperson evaluate one of their own ilk and render judgment.
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This can be brought out with a TopGrading style interview.
It is one think to know your material. It is another to be creative and be able to adapt your material well to a new situation. I assume this would be a superb quality in a startup.
(*However, in the United States, you are not allowed to give aptitude tests as part of job applications. I am not sure if this would qualify. Ask a lawyer.)
I think one reason companies don't put this kind of rigor into non-technical interviews is the same reason most basketball teams don't use a full-court press (despite the fact it's near certain to bring much better results): because it's hard.
Another reason was alluded to by chudson. That is, companies don't really know what they are looking for from non-technical people. A small company interviewing for, say, a director of product management might have candidates meet with the CEO, VP Engineering, VP Marketing, etc. None of these people works in the trenches of product, and so none has a concrete notion of what they really need.
Finally, I once interviewed for a company that had candidates write an essay about exceptional customer experience, and then do a substantial amount of work (i.e. deliverables) on a hypothetical client project - and then present it to a group. This was rigorous, concrete and comprehensive. When the company hired me, however, it became obvious that they didn't operate with this kind of rigor, and so it might have been better for them to devise a way to find out how well I would perform amidst chaos and constant fire drills.
(basketball reference above is courtesy Malcolm Gladwell's article in the May 11 issue of the New Yorker - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/0... )