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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.