Interviewed for my dream job, HR questions caught me off guard.

Robertf969

I always thought I was pretty good at the HR style questions that you get In an interview, you know the why should we hire you type questions. Well I pretty much bombed on some of those type of questions yesterday but did really well on the technical questions. My question is for those of you that sit in the interviewers chair, how much emphasis do you place on those HR type questions?My guess is quite a bit, which bothers me because I know I could have done better. The team seemed really awesome and the work seemed to line up nicely with my skill set. Shoulda coulda woulda I guess, maybe I'll get lucky and get a 4th interview.

srabiee

Can you give us some examples of the questions and why you think you did poorly?

cyberguypr

^ this guy beat me. I certainly want to hear what kind of questions you got. From my experience the HR questions and the easiest ones as you can prepare ahead of time and they tend to be similar everywhere.

Cyberscum

I would weigh the HR STAR style questions highly. I tend to look at overall pic rather than how technical someone is.

It all depends on the hiring official though. Good luck

Khaos1911

I like to get a feel for a a potential employees personality. If the candidate can spew a bunch of technical jargon, but can't hold a convo outside of being super techie, probably won't be a good fit for my security team.

tpatt100

Khaos1911 wrote: »

I like to get a feel for a a potential employees personality. If the candidate can spew a bunch of technical jargon, but can't hold a convo outside of being super techie, probably won't be a good fit for my security team.

Pretty much this, soft skills are almost as important as technical skills. I worked with a guy who was really smart on the IT side but holy hell when it came time meet with clients our manager always made sure he was off site for some reason or other.

networker050184

Usually the HR screen has nothing to do with the hiring manager bringing you on unless you bomb it so bad they think you're a psycho and they block it.

Mitechniq

Not to steal your thread, I just didn't want to start a new one but just 2 days ago I got a couple of crazy questions.

'Why are man-holes round?"
"You have a hammer and a nail, both equal $1.10. The hammer is $1.00 MORE than the nail, how much is the nail worth?"

LeBroke

Mitechniq wrote: »

Not to steal your thread, I just didn't want to start a new one but just 2 days ago I got a couple of crazy questions.

'Why are man-holes round?"

So Google has questions to ask? And also so you can't stub your toe on a corner. (Real answer is so they can't fall inside the manhole).

"You have a hammer and a nail, both equal $1.10. The hammer is $1.00 MORE than the nail, how much is the nail worth?"

Is this a trick question? Seems more like first-grade math.... The nail is $0.10.

NetworkNewb

LeBroke wrote: »

Is this a trick question? Seems more like first-grade math.... The nail is $0.10.

$0.05.... lol

Mitechniq

man hole is round because a square hole would fall in if turned, plus pressure of a car on a man hole is evenly distributed thus creating no single point of failure.

That was exactly why they asked the 'hammer and nail' question, would you throw out what your mind first thought or actually do some critical thinking and realize 10 cent cannot be the answer because that leaves the hammer with only 90 cents more....

LeBroke

NetworkNewb wrote: »

$0.05.... lol

Nail = x
Hammer = x + 1
x + (x+1) = 1.10
2x+1 = 1.10

Huh, you're right, and I'm stupid.

Alceo

In my country a lot of manhole are square ....

aderon

Mitechniq wrote: »

"You have a hammer and a nail, both equal $1.10. The hammer is $1.00 MORE than the nail, how much is the nail worth?"

I read that as hammer = $1.10 and nail = $1.10 at first and felt real dumb for not understanding the question lol

tpatt100

I would reply that a man hole is round so if I fell your belly and butt would prevent you from falling in.

phantasm

tpatt100 wrote: »

I would reply that a man hole is round so if I fell your belly and butt would prevent you from falling in.

A manhole is 3' in diameter. Some people can fall through that pretty easily.

TheFORCE

One time a hiring manager asked me this question... What is the population of NYC? At that time I had watched a documentary and answered it really quick saying 8 million people. The manager was actually surprised I was so close lol.

Robertf969

So it was a panel interview and the first one i got was a mix between tech and non tech: "Explain to our HR rep why applying software patches is important in such a way that she understands you, and feels like it's important" another one was "Tell me about the last time you had to tell someone who was much more senior to you why they couldn't have what they want?" The second one was easy but they kept diving deeper into my answer. I had a couple others that I had prepared answers for that went OK. Sometime I think I am my own worst critic and it might have gone better than I thought. After the phone interview I thought I tanked it but a week later they flew me out for the in person interview.

StussyNz

Robertf969 wrote: »

So it was a panel interview and the first one i got was a mix between tech and non tech: "Explain to our HR rep why applying software patches is important in such a way that she understands you, and feels like it's important" another one was "Tell me about the last time you had to tell someone who was much more senior to you why they couldn't have what they want?" The second one was easy but they kept diving deeper into my answer. I had a couple others that I had prepared answers for that went OK. Sometime I think I am my own worst critic and it might have gone better than I thought. After the phone interview I thought I tanked it but a week later they flew me out for the in person interview.

On the basis of this it seems that they were just testing your "Soft" skills;

- "Explain and Tell Me" questions are just ways of them testing your communication skills.
- "Digging deeper" is just a way of HR recruiters to test your logical thinking.

Most employers these days value the "soft" skills just as much as the "Technical" skills...

UnixGuy

Had HR asking me to do IQ test...when I finished it I was vocal about it and told that this test is irrelevant and inaccurate measure of intillegence and problem solving skills (but I said it in firm yet light hearted way)...they appreciated my honesty.