Brain teaser for job interview questions?

Brain teaser for job interview questions?

Just curious if this is a normal thing to do...

I have had a company ask my the 3 three light bulb question at the end of it

You have a set of 3 light switches outside a closed door. One of them controls the light inside the room. With the door closed from outside the room, you can turn the light switches on or off as many times as you would like.

You can go into the room - one time only - to see the light. You cannot see the whether the light is on or off from outside the room, nor can you change the light switches while inside the room.

No one else is in the room to help you. The room has no windows.

Based on the information above, how would you determine which of the three light switches controls the light inside the room?

HINT: Be sure to use all of your senses!!!

Is this normal now to do in interviews? What have you been asked?

I have also been ask, name everything you can do w/ a pencil in like 30 seconds....

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Comments

tayro12

Hi,

lets say I have the following Switches.

Switch - A
Switch - B
Switch - C

what i will do is :

Turn on Switch A - wait for 1 hr.
Then turn on Switch B - wait for 5 minutes

then go into the room and touch the light bulb.

if it's Hot then switch for the room light is Switch A.
if it's Warm then switch for the room light is Switch B.
if its at room temperature then switch for the room light is Switch C.

gbdavidx

That wasn't my question, please reread my post - I understand the answer - i was just wondering if this was a common thing now

and also if there are any other ones I should watch out for

networker050184

I've heard about stuff like this but I've never been asked anything like this. I don't ask people questions like this when I interview either.

dave330i

Some companies do ask these types of question to see how creative you can be. Latest study shows that brain teaser isn't very good at measuring creativity. They're great at measuring how well you solve brain teasers.

santaowns

Yes it is common. It shows two things one how you work on problems and two the all not so common sense. I've had a recruiter start a conversation with that and two interviews do something similar.

networker050184

dave330i wrote: »

Some companies do ask these types of question to see how creative you can be. Latest study shows that brain teaser isn't very good at measuring creativity. They're great at measuring how well you solve brain teasers.

I read an article recently that was along these lines. Google was one of the big ones that asked these types of questions and have realized they are pretty useless.