The Interview Trick Elon Used That You Should Not
Elon Musk apparently personally interviewed Tesla's first one thousand employees. From janitors to rocket scientists.
A 2015 biography claimed to reveal the interview question which was his favourite.
Less a question, more a riddle;
You're standing on the surface of the Earth. You walk one mile south, one mile west, and one mile north. You end up exactly where you started.
Where are you?
I noted this week that the tiktok generation have just rediscovered this.
For those of us a little older, the Daily Mail provided this bare summary graphic.
Which, as the Popular Mechanics workings show, does not give the complete picture.
Such riddles are labelled in recruitment circles brainteaser or oddball questions.
From time to time, a 'new' one whizzes through global feeds.
Lately, I've delivered some short, 45min sessions on conducting interviews over video.
Specifically for Sales Managers to gauge potential salespeople hoping to join them.
Something I have 25 years experience in.
And when across video, some tweaks are essential over what we do interviewing when IRL.
The one thing we should definitely not do though, is ask any of these types of questions.
As pioneers of them inside Google came to realise, after a decade of such deployment;
"We find that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. They don't predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart."
That, Elon, he smart. Make sure you smart too.