Number of words: 108

Before you pose any question to a job applicant, you ought to ask yourself two questions:

• Am I willing to hire someone because of a good answer to this question?
• Am I willing to reject someone because of a bad answer?

Unless your response to (at least) one of the two questions is yes, there’s no point in asking the question. The question may tell you something about the candidate, but what it tells you is not information you can act on. You don’t have time to ask a question like that.

Excerpted from page numbers133 of ‘How Would You Move Mount Fuji?’ by William Poundstone.