Number of words: 209

Many of these are classic logic puzzles. Other interview questions are intended to help assign candidates to specific positions. Some of the questions that outsiders find most eccentric (Which of the fifty states would you remove? Which way should a key turn in a car door?) fall into thiscategory. They test mainly whether the candidate can come to a decision and articulate it.

Jabe Blumenthal liked to ask program manager candidates to design a house. Sometimes the candidate would go to the white board and draw a square. This is about the worst possible thing to do, in Blumenthal’s estimation. A house can be anything. You never build a house without asking who’s paying for it and how much money, space, and time are available. A candidate who started to draw a house without addressing these issues was usually out of the running.

In such questions, the important thing is the “algorithm.” An algorithm is the exacting, step-by-step method underlying any computer program. Here, it’s interview-speak for the way a candidate addresses a complex, open-ended question. On questions such as this, a good algorithm begins with the candidate eliciting the details from the interviewer.

Excerpted from page numbers67-68 of ‘How Would You Move Mount Fuji?’ by William Poundstone.