Chris Sells is Program Manager for Microsoft. On his personal web page he invites visitors to share their Microsoft interview experience.

Chris lists a variety of non-standard job interview questions one might expect to hear at the main campus at Microsoft. The list of job interview questions is quite extensive and are divided into four categories. While there are a few that are relevant (see below), a majority fall under the “Strange” category, such as this situation: The interviewer hands you a black pen and says nothing but “This pen is red.”

A few listed that are relevant:

• If you had to learn a new computer language, how would you go about doing it?
• If you are going to receive an award in 5 years, what is it for and who is the audience?
• Why do you want to work at Microsoft?

These are listed as relevant because they could help determine your needed expertise or your motivation. Admittedly, I would never utilize these questions without appropriate follow-up questions and a way to measure their relevance to a particular position.

Here is a brief sampling of questions for each of the four categories.

Riddles

• You’ve got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
• One train leaves Los Angeles at 15mph heading for New York. Another train leaves from New York at 20mph heading for Los Angeles on the same track. If a bird, flying at 25mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?

Algorithms

• What’s the difference between a linked list and an array?
• Implement a linked list. Why did you pick the method you did?
• Implement an algorithm to sort a linked list. Why did you pick the method you did? Now do it in O(n) time.

Applications

• How would you redesign an ATM?
• Suppose we wanted to run a microwave oven from the computer. What kind of software would you write to do this?
• How would you design a coffee-machine for an automobile?
• How would you build an alarm clock for deaf people?

Thinkers

• How are M&Ms made?
• If you had a clock with lots of moving mechanical parts, you took it apart piece by piece without keeping track of the method of how it was disassembled, then you put it back together and discovered that 3 important parts were not included; how would you go about reassembling the clock?

By far, a majority of the questions are ego driven and fall under the umbrella of “Stress Questions.” I use to support a hiring manager who would routinely ask technical job seekers, “If you were a fruit, what would you be?” and “Describe the month of June.” It is questionable if any of these types of questions do more than waste precious time.

From the hiring manager’s perspective, I can understand a need to develop tools to get beyond the boring and shallow job interview questions and answers, like “What are your strengths” and “What are your weaknesses.” Too many job seekers exercise Impression Management and provide a canned answer. Hiring managers want to dodge these worn out answers and avoid the job seeker’s “self-monitoring.” Snyder and Grangestad define self-monitoring individuals as those with the ability to “regulate their expressive self-presentation for the sake of desired public appearances, and thus be highly responsive to social and interpersonal clues of situational appropriate performance.” In brief, a well-prepared job seekers will tell you what you want to hear.

It is the hiring manager’s job to peel back the onion – to find out who this job seeker really is. Beyond their polished resume, what is this individual really bringing to the table? What value can be placed on their knowledge, skills, and abilities? Sure, they have an impressive background, but how successful will they be on MY team?

One of the key problems is hiring managers only have an hour or two of interview time before they make a hiring decision. Odds of making a hiring mistake are high – very high. We can date someone for three years before deciding to marry. Even with a three-year investment in time, the chances of us staying married are only about 1 in 2. How then, can we expect the hiring manager to make a quality decision in a day, or a week?

So what is the work around? Asking questions like, “Explain a scenario for testing a salt shaker?” Sure, if you are a salt shaker manufacturer. Obviously, asking the traditional interview questions has not worked for Microsoft (nor most other companies.) Here are a couple of suggestions that could be utilized separately, or in concert with another:

Benchmarking: Microsoft has some incredibly gifted individuals. Figure out what makes them tick. Look at the top performers and develop a Competency Model. A Competency Model is created by determining which 8 or so core competencies are required for a superior performer. Based on the questions presented earlier, I suspect two of the competences are Analytical Thinking and Conceptual Thinking. Another obvious one is Expertise, specifically Technical Expertise. I have actually developed a method for deconstructing a job description and assigning core competencies. If anyone working at Microsoft would send a copy of their job description, I’ll provide a pdf of the step-by-step process. The information can also be found in my book, InterviewRX.

Competency-Based Interview: Once the Competency Model has been identified, then behavioral interview questions can be assigned to each of the Competency. It will be important to set up several follow-up, probing secondary questions. This will allow the hiring manager to peel away the layers of the onion and get to the detailed information required for a reasonable hiring decision. A scoring system (generally 1-5 points) should compliment the behavioral questions. It is important that everyone on the interview team understand the relevance of the interview questions and be instructed on how to score the answers.

Pre-Employment Assessments: There are several excellent pre-employment assessments, such as the EQ-I or the ZRHS assessments. Both assessments measure components of Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is our non-cognitive abilities, such as Assertiveness, Independence, Self-Regard, Empathy, Adaptability, Stress Management, Impulse Control, and others. 20 years of research and accumulated data has determined that our IQ (cognitive abilities such as Analytical Thinking and Conceptual Thinking) accounts for only 6% of our ability to succeed in the workplace. A growing number of companies are coming to the conclusion that IQ is a poor predictor of our professional success.

Emotional Intelligence, when measured is referred to in terms of the Emotional Quotient (EQ) and is normed to 100, just like the IQ tests. Our EQ has shown to account for approximately 27% of our job performance. In comparing IQ to EQ, EQ has four times the impact of IQ in our professional endeavors. Any company should be taking a serious look at the EQ of their potential hires.

I am not familiar with Microsoft’s interview and hiring processes to know which, if any of the suggestions may already be in place. The comments are really more global and are meant to be considered as a framework for any company trying to develop best practices.