Every techie has been on a few job interviews. It's tough, from either side of the desk, because you're trying to prove that you're brilliant in a subject that isn't suited to a song-and-dance. You can talk about projects you've worked on; you can claim expertise with certain tools and languages; you can wave around references from clients or previous employers. But that rarely helps you demonstrate what you're best at — whatever that is.

And then an interviewer asks a lame question that doesn't even approach that goal, such as, "What are your three greatest strengths and three greatest weaknesses?" As dumb as it is, the interviewer doesn't know what to ask; what he really wants to know is if you'd be a comfortable person to sit next to, 40+ hours a week, and if you're just BSing about what you say you can do.

Like I said: everybody's been there. We've all encountered good questions in an interview. We've all tried really hard not to roll our eyes when we're asked something pointless or offensive. And it's worse when your manager says, "We have a couple of candidates coming through, today. I've scheduled you to talk with them." Now you have to find out if the person escorted to your office is qualified for the job and if that individual will fit in with the team culture. (Realistically, that includes, "Do you like Chinese food? We go out every Friday for lunch together.")

To help you out, I asked experienced techies — programmers, QA testers, web developers — to share the interview questions that they most hated, and the ones they thought were the most valuable. They may make you groan. I also hope they make you say, "Hey, that's a good one to ask, the next time that HR puts me on the interview schedule."

For example: the best job application I personally encountered was for a tiny compiler optimization company in Maine. The written form had the basic background-collection stuff, then some rather strange questions and a few brain teasers. The point of the latter wasn't to see if you could deal with engineering trivia, but to see how you addressed the problem. (That might have bugged me, except I knew the company owner — we'd played D&D together, which is how I met him — and he meant it. Playing a fantasy role playing game is another way to learn how someone solves problems and copes with frustrations, but that's another discussion.)

Anyway, a pair of questions on that list were so powerful that I have continued to use them when I've done journalistic interviews with famous people: "What's the most important thing you learned in school? What's the most important thing you learned outside of school?" Imagine for a moment that you had to answer those questions; they sure poke a hole through the puffery, don't they? You can only answer them as yourself, not with a "what makes me look good?" answer.

I did take that job in Maine. The company policy was that all the files were open, and everyone was free to look through them. So once, while waiting for a long compile, I pawed through the Interviews folder. I was astonished by the range of answers those two questions elicited. The company owner (who filled out his own form) had written "recursion" as the answer to the second question; someone else wrote "the importance of God and my family." That doesn't tell you everything about the person — no one question/answer will — but it sure tells you something.

Bonehead Comments

I know that, before we get to the pragmatic list of effective questions, you want an excuse to snort into your morning coffee. Let's start out with a few:

• The interviewer who asked an entry level programmer, as he made the job offer, The position pays $35k, but I think I can get you $45k. Which would you prefer? The now-more-experienced techie commented, "Right, well, I want to stay in a lower tax bracket so I'll take the $35k. Duh!"
• What makes you think you are a better fit for this position than the other candidates? Heck, I don't know, said one techie. "I have no idea what the other candidate's credentials are. But I can tell you what I bring to the table. You are asking me to do a comparision with no data."
• In a phone interview: Are you clean shaven? Two years later, the candidate says, he's still trying to figure out what that had to do with software testing.
• Are you able to say "No" to something? The respondent answered "No," which was a "Yes." He did not get the job.
• If you could be any animal, what would you be and why? A consultant in Wisconsin wrote, "My initial reaction was to run not walk out of the room, instead I responded with 'A cat, because they always land on their feet.' Why did I answer this way? It was the first thing that popped into my head after all the thoughts of 'What has this got to do with the job?'" She got the job; "the Manager said that she really liked my response and thought it was so original. Good grief!"
• The candidate was given a list of about 200 telecommunications terms to define, which took an hour and a half to complete. After he got the job, he learned, "The idiot giving the test had no concept what any of them meant. He was just going through a huge list and not really keep track of what I was saying. I should of taken that as a sign of what was coming because that idiot ended up working with me and making my life miserable for another year."
• Nitin, a Java programmer, was asked to identify his seven good habits. Nitin wasn't introspective, and hadn't read the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. "I tried and tried, could not go above four. Then I said, 'Look, I am a very humble man, so telling seven good habits is too much for me.' So he said, 'Okay, you are humble, that makes it five; now tell me two more.'"
• What are your strengths? Techies generally agree that this is a useless question — not because it's inherently bad, but just because most people can't answer it. As several developers pointed out, 90% of the candidates say "I'm a fast learner" or "I'm a hard worker." (But, as you'll see later in this article, the question does have some useful variations.)
• A Ruby programmer was asked to identify the layers of the OSI network model, when applying as a web developer/sysadmin. "Sure, they are interesting, but it's something I certainly didn't need to know off the top of my head."

Those are the easy dumb questions, though. Let's take a look at the best questions... and the variations that can turn them into really awful things to say.