After Asking Thousands Of Stupid Job Interview Questions I Learned To Screen For These Two Traits Instead

Most job interviewee questions are atrocious.

I know this not because I’m a serial interviewee (I’m unemployable at this point) but because I’m the one who has asked notoriously stupid interview questions. They were stupid for two reasons:

• They were basic questions that everyone had a canned answer to.
• I tried to be cute and ask random questions like, “What’s your favorite superhero?” which provided nothing useful for the candidate or me.

Over time, I learned that questions have to expose something insightful about the candidate to determine if they’re an excellent fit for my team and vice versa.

That’s why I started to test for these two traits:

1/ Test For Resourcefulness

The ability to be resourceful is useful for any job.

The ability to push through obstacles, to see failure as an opportunity, and to learn and get things done. Resourcefulness, in my company, matches well with our core value of “Accept problems then solve them,” so it’s an important trait.

In his book Talent, Tyler Cowen recommends repeating the question, “That’s great. What’s…