The Telegraph:
Many people would love to work at Apple, considered to be one of the most forward-thinking and innovative tech companies in the world today. However, would you be able to get through an Apple job interview?
People who’ve applied for jobs with the firm – successfully and unsuccessfully – have been sharing some of the questions they were asked during their interviews on the website Glassdoor. Here’s a selection of them – how would you cope with being asked these?
I used to work at Apple but, if these are the questions they’re asking now, I couldn’t get a job there today.
Incredibly silly.
None or very few of these questions could determine how successful a person could be at Apple or any other company. How many babies are born every day? Really….Feels like consultants running amok at the company.
Excellent set of questions. They demonstrate how potential employees are able to (or not) think on their feet and thoughtfully problem-solve. When interviewing engineers I’d always ask a few similar questions.
Best question I was asked a long time ago when being interviewed was “Estimate how many barbers there are in the US.” The correct answer wasn’t important, it was how you went about getting to an answer and the assumptions used.
Seems highly likely these are unconnected questions for very different positions, as the same skill set would not fit every job Apple might try to fill.
That coins one is a poser. I feel like the answer involves flipping the coins, but even then, flipping all the coins just leaves you with 90 heads to heavenly split, effectively the same problem. I could probably search for the answer, but I won’t.
Good heavens, seriously? These are standard-issue interview questions, not apple-specific in any way whatsoever. And they’re not meant to be – they’re meant to see how you deal with ambiguity and how you think on your feet.
No company worth its salt would limit interview questions ONLY to specifics about the job and how to perform it. Obviously.
I think I’d do OK. Seem pretty basic standard HR stuff to me.
Trick question.
All the coins have a heads side and a tails side. Split 100 coins into two even piles of 50. Regardless of which side was up, the coin has a heads and a tails. The question doesn’t ask anyone to ensure the heads side is up.
Question 12 is similar I think.
Yes Good heavens…
Interesting to note made by Shawn comments about his ability to get a job today with these questions……Not sure if the questions are irrelevant or Shaw competency not sufficient.
Or maybe, just maybe, I was making a joke.
the story logic puzzles are a false indicator. i’ve seen these at other companies and they’re just silly parlor tricks to make the interviewer feel like a good interviewer. but as an engineer i solve problems in my problem space with my tools and problem space knowledge, not abstract puzzles. not being able to answer these doesn’t discredit a good engineer, despite what the smug interviewers feel.
when designing software and writing code one doesn’t need to think on their feet. one needs to understand the principles of good software engineering and be able to implement them. it’s analytical. it’s methodical.
(imagine the looks you’d get if you asked your deck builder to answer this BS. he doesn’t need to think on his feet either, he just needs to know how to be a good carpenter and build things well)
No, I got the joke.
One does assume that you were not asked these questions, yet you were still good at your job.
The counterargument to these tricky-puzzles-interviews was laid out in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/why-brainteasers-dont-belong-in-job-interviews
In addition to other cogent criticisms of the practice, research shows it doesn’t work.
There’s quite a bit of evidence that interviews based on these logic puzzles have at best no correlation, and at worst negative correlation, to job performance after hire.
i stand by my original post. if i’m interviewing two comparable, capable candidates, i absolutely want to hear them both answer an out-of-the-blue, seemingly unrelated question. at the least, i know i’ll be hiring someone interesting. at the best, i’ll have my bullshit detector on full strength – if one of them is just dancing without thinking about it, they’re someone i’m not interested in hiring.
speaking of bullshit detectors, mine pricked up at the phrase “quite a bit of evidence.” unless you can show me an actual study that proves both sides, as in literally and actually proves the “you should have hired the other person” alternative, i highly doubt there’s “evidence.” more like “i talked to someone who hired someone based on answering the heads-or-tails question, and they sucked” evidence, i’m betting.
The New Yorker article linked below summarizes and references some of the key research findings.
One of the key points is that interview process ends up being a way of selecting candidates that are congenial to the interviewer, rather than a screening for any type of skills or capabilities (and that that “likability” judgement is often formed within 20 seconds).
The whole logic puzzle thing has always seemed to me an aspect of that: I like tricky logic puzzles, I like to think I am quick on my feet, so I’ll hit the interviewee with some tricky puzzles and see if he reacts the way I would. Problems being the design of these puzzles is totally artificial, and often turns on obscure interpretations of classification schemes or willingness to break some unwritten rules of puzzle statements while thoroughly adhering to others, randomly. What if what your organization is really lacking is slow, quiet, thoughtful, thorough problem solvers? That’s often the case in organizations built by people who consider themselves “dynamic” or “out-of-the-box”, yet the latter will inevitably structure and conduct the interview process to exclude the former.
fair enough, i stand corrected – and my apologies for my own crankiness. it stems from far too many “people say that…” sentences on the intertubes.
i appreciate your expansion of the argument, and it’s true that we tend to hire based on likeability and similarity to our own thought patterns, rather than what our organization actually needs (often to our detriment). that said, i do think these types of questions do have value as showing an ability to think on one’s feet. ambiguity is always out there, right?