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        Social skills vs. Technically correct
        2018.05.04 22:03:10 CEST
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        This week I was in an interesting discussion about interview
        questions and processes: many companies have recruitment teams which
        are responsible for conducting phone screens to verify minimal
        knowledge requirements. These phone screens usually follow a pre-
        prepared script, questions and expected answers, which a recruiter,
        even if unknowledgeable on the subject, can use. Now suppose there
        is a multiple-choice question which has a somewhat-correct answer
        almost everyone believes to be correct, but specialists know to be
        not-completely-correct. How should these specialists answer the
        question?
       
        If I were ever in this position, my answer would be along the lines
        of: "I think you are looking for answer X, but that might not be
        correct under this, this and that situation". This gives the
        recruiter the answer they are expecting, but still allows me to add
        more information and provide a truly correct answer.
       
        The downside of this way out is it requires extra skills on the
        specialist side: to be able to detect the "expected answer" and
        differentiate from the "correct answer"; then social skills to
        provide the answer in a way that won't cause disagreements. The
        counter argument is this interview method is adding burden onto
        people who are more knowledgeable and this seems unfair.
       
        We ran out of time for our discussion and I haven't had time to go
        through the arguments again and think the problem out. I hope to do
        so this week.