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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 whi | |
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 line | |
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 ad | |
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 d | |
so this week. |