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By Neirin Gray Desai of Dailymail.Com
Updated Apr 9, 2023 12:39, Apr 9, 2023 13:11
- This question has become associated with Microsoft’s hiring process in the 2000s.
- Hiring managers have since said such questions are useless
- Meanwhile, psychologists point to ‘narcissism and sadism’ behind teaser
“Why are manhole covers round?”
This clichéd brain teaser is said to have become famous in 2003 when it appeared in a book that cataloged interview questions Microsoft would ask prospective employees to test their lateral thinking skills. increase.
Over the years, many “correct” answers have been proposed.
However, recruiters are now questioning whether it helps the hiring process, and psychologists have even pointed to malicious intent.
The most common answer is that the round cover will not fall into the hole, and the square cover will slide down if it is inserted at an angle.
Others argue that the round tubes they cover are the most structurally sound shape, and instead, you’ll never need to rotate the round cover to insert it into a hole.
A more abstract answer suggests that a round cover should be rolled up for easier movement and use less material than a square cover of the same width/diameter.
This question was just one of a class of interview questions that became increasingly popular in the early 2000s and is widely attributed to upstart tech companies.
Other such questions might be something like “Why is the tennis ball blurry?” “How many cows are there in Canada?” or “How many piano tuners are there in the world?”
In William Poundstone’s 2003 book How would you move Mount Fuji?: Microsoft’s cult of the puzzle, he writes: Separate logical, motivated, unflappable and innovative thinkers.
The issue was initially associated with Microsoft and then with Google, but the latter has distanced itself more and more from them.
In 2012, ten years after Poundstone’s book, Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations, told The New York Times:
“On the hiring side, we’ve found the brain teaser to be a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit in an airplane? How many gas stations are there in Manhattan? It’s a waste of time.They don’t predict anything.They mostly serve to make the interviewer feel smart.
In a 2010 blog post, former Google hiring committee member Gail Larkman McDowell wrote about the manhole question:
Worse, the questions often don’t make much sense and don’t have sensible answers.
“Perhaps the strangest thing about these impossible questions for anthropologists studying early 21st-century hiring rituals is that no one knows the answers,” writes Poundstone.
Many factors may have influenced the shape of manhole covers, in particular they were not always round.
A 2018 paper from the International Association of Applied Psychology reviewed a study of 736 adults to understand the effectiveness of brain teaser interview questions. Not only did the question prove to be useless from a recruitment point of view, but it was suggested that it was posed out of malice.
“Results from multiple regressions controlling for interview experience and gender showed that narcissism and sadism explain the likelihood of using brain teasers in interviews,” the authors of the paper wrote.
Hard interview questions can seem dated, but interview guides on job sites like Indeed and Monster advise candidates to prepare.
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