For this month, Kevin Feasel asked us what our favourite job interview question is. And I’ll be honest, it isn’t a question. Because answering questions is all fun and games but is it really that much more?
I can dig myself deep into a lot of books, prepare myself for the interview and, like an exam, come up with the theoretically correct answers. And ace the interview. And for some roles, this might be enough.
When I applied for the job at my current employer, I did get a general interview. It was fun, we had some laughs and I got an invite to round number 2. This wasn’t an interview but a test. I got a number of SQL statements and the question were along the lines of ‘does it compile, will it create any output, what will the result set look like, etc’. In other words, it was some kind of knowledge and experience test to see if I could deduce, from paper, what would happen with a query. Afterwards, we entered a discussion as to why I got to certain answers.
So, maybe my favourite interview question is a skills test :).
Thanks for reading and thank you Kevin for hosting this month!
Reitse's blog 
Thank you for your contribution. It’s kind of interesting that the company did the culture fit part first and then the technical fit part afterward—I’ve normally experienced things the other way around (from both sides of the table), where technical filtering comes and then culture filtering. And a skills test can be quite valuable when the people putting together the test calibrate it to the level of knowledge necessary to work for the company and also work to ensure no “company policy” or internal knowledge sneaks into the test.
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The company I’m working for is really people first. That’s why there’s a human fit first before tech. In the end, you’ll always need to learn more but it’s both a base level check and a check on capabilities.
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