Just look at this job question. And the answer by the smart alec who got the job. Na wa for you oh @mark.
Hotels.ng Question 8: Write a two paragraph speech to an alien species that want to move into earth because their planet has been destroyed, and need humans to give them a single continent.
Winning Candidate Answer:
Greetings, Ladies? Gentlemen? This is awkward, and it urgently demands a review of our interplanetary salutations. One cannot be certain you aren’t sexless fungi feeding saprophytically on the back of a less developed life form. The preceding line exposes the natural human curiosity about aliens, a curiosity that has seen us create several alien-based box office movies: Star Trek, Star Wars, Transformers, Superman, Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
However, with respect to your request for ‘neighbourly usage of your lodging facilities re: a continent [preferably Africa] in light of unfortunate demise of our home planet Betelgeuse II’, we would have to respectfully decline. Reason has been hinted at above [we’ve seen the movies; it almost never ends well.] Add to that the years of anal probes and brainwashing and the maddening peekaboo of UFO sightings and we daresay you aliens are too exasperating to have on this planet. Also, in South Africa, xenophobia [which literally means: a fear of aliens] appears to be an actual problem and as such your safety is hardly guaranteed. In the interest of fairness and ‘extending the hand of friendship,’ we would have you know that earth is composed of 29% land and 71% water. If you are able to use your advanced tech to set up camp in the Mediterranean, that would be fine. Note: This should not be taken to mean: “go and drown yourselves”.
Isn’t there a danger that you’ll only find people who are witty or creative thinkers? I imagine the roles to fill require other skills than those. Conversely you may lose out on other ‘geniuses’ who lack the ability to express themselves this well.
Still, very clever questions and answers. I don already rule myself out of passing this stage
Very interesting strategy. Are these questions for technical roles or are they are non-technical roles? I like it because one gets to see how one would communicate within the organization and outside too. Most techies are poor writers. It would be nice to see this strategy combined with coding tasks. Great job.
Going to be honest, I find these sorts of things to be turn offs. I wouldn’t answer it for even Google, but then again, Google would tell me what the job was, so there’s that. The language of the job role: ‘looking for a genius’ is also cause for side-eye. I know I’m a smart person, but if I was looking for a job, I wouldn’t even bother. Nothing about the role itself, what you’d be doing, what the company will offer…
I mean, I’m glad it worked out for you, Mark, but I’m noticing a trend among local startups (which is already a questionable trend in foreign startups, see this storify), where the listings are discriminatory (looking for a female anything), more focused on perks than anything else (a whole article ad to talk about your chairs) or vague.
Obviously, you can’t fill your organisation with just the same kind of people. But if you have too much of non-witty and non-creative, also a problem.
So as regards the other question, you are right. This test strongly biased towards people who could write well BUT if you notice, most of the problems were about problem solving, not really writing. E.g there were comprehension problems, research problems, etc.
I’d rather Editi/Anakle’s Why did the Chicken cross the road" interview model… An interview question that really is fair and cuts across diverse demography and interests, also would more likely give me 2-3 options before honing in on “the one”… But then, maybe I’m just not cerebral enough and can’t understand how this interview model provides me with options
Everything I will love to say @onyeka already said. I will just add: A real ‘genius’ will probably move on, on seeing this kind of post with a side-eye.
And then again, what are the perks(or the pay) at Hotels to demand this sort of test? If you are going to act like Google/Dropbox, you probably should do it to the fullest, end to end. Don’t just copy their interview style. Before you ask for geniuses, you may want to ask if your company is worthy of geniuses but that’s another question entirely. In my mind, its a two-way thing unless we want to just kid ourselves.
And last I checked, I read Google is ditching this method of recruiting. If however, the job position is for a ‘genius’ creative writer, this is supercool. But for a technical person, meh.
And personally, I feel the word ‘genius’ is being abused, from the original post. How do you reduce a genius to the question about alien landing? This is supercool and funny but certainly not genius unless like @xolubi said, comedy(and coolness) is the new genius.
Overall, nice one!
EDIT:
A genius should probably figured English is a purely earthly language and start to develop a communication protocol first, before anything else.
Aliens more likely than not, will not speak English. Or maybe don’t even speak at all. Human-Alien communication will likely not be written/spoken English. I may be over thinking this.
Maybe you are. Or maybe you need more imagination. It is easy to fall into the anthropomorphic trap (no matter how much we try to think outside the box, most aliens in our fantasies have hands and legs and eyes and noses), but then again, if aliens had super-advanced technology – to reach here, they would have had to at least have invented faster-than-light-travel – it might not be too far-fetched that they will come armed with universal translators…
" if aliens had super-advanced technology – to reach here, they would have had to at least have invented faster-than-light-travel"
Not necessarily, their perception of time might differ from ours. What we perceive as a year could just be minutes to them.
As for the translator, you can’t translate a language you’ve never experienced, so I’d rather go with a universal mind reader that allows you understand what the other party is saying no matter how they say or not say it
“gap between 1st and 2nd when it comes to genius” is an interesting phrase. We’re still waiting on the results anyways.
By the way, a lot of the respondent’s answers are pretty intelligent but the answer to Q.8 is the weakest IMO. Doesn’t show any brilliance or answer the question in critical or good-solution-inclined manner.
PS: I assure you @lordbanks, it’s still wayyyy harder to get a job at Google
Speaking of how hard it is to get a job at Google - the developer behind Homebrew was recently refused a position at Google for failing a stupid whiteboard test even though the interviewer admitted that 90% of their developers use Homebrew.
This particular comment on Hacker News gave me a good laugh.
This is management porn. “It’s better to reject a good candidate than hire a bad candidate.” It makes the manager feel good. “Wow! That candidate seemed smart, but I rejected him anyway! I’m such a great leader! I make the tough decisions!”
