Yesterday I blogged on Simon Swan’s article in the latest edition of Management Today and got quite a reaction. A whole load of people, shocked at the costs to their business, contacted me with questions and to discuss team restructures. They ranged from large businesses with a number of teams to a small company of four considering expanding to a team of just five people.

Not so boring stats
All of them were shocked to hear the answers to the “INfrequently asked questions”.
that business never asks*:

• What percentage of new hires fail within two years of appointment?
  A: 40%
• What % or restructured teams fail to meet objectives?
  A: 42%
• What % of projects are completed to time, budget and specification?
  A: 28%

But it doesn’t have to be like this and I talked through my callers an eighteen minute SKYPE call when I explained how to reduce the risks of new hire and team failure…easily.
They’ve urged me to offer the same eighteen minutes to my SKYPE contacts (stephenharvarddavis) and I thought I would offer this to my blog readers and at no charge.

If you want to take me up on this then email me at Stephen@assimilating-talent.com so that we can arrange a mutually convenient time for a SKYPE call.
For the moment I’m restricting this to the first ten respondents and during the next seven days so don’t let time pass if you want to take me up on the offer

* Stats from various sources including Fortune Magazine and HBR

I read with facination Anne Fisher’s article in Fortune magazine  The Most Ridiculous Job Interview Questions asked by some leading companies to job candidates. She does defend them on the basis that the interviewers weren’t looking for correct answers but how the candidate responded to the question. So I asked some of my network how they might answer the questions.

Interview questions mentioned in Fortune include,

“Using a scale of 1 to 10, rate yourself on how weird you are.” — Capital One (COF)

“How many bricks are there in Shanghai? Consider only residential buildings.” –Deloitte Consulting

“You have three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled so that no label accurately identifies the contents of any of the boxes. Opening just one box, and without looking inside, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?” — Apple (AAPL)

Lack of expertise to anaylse answer

Most people thought the questions silly and was another “fad” that would probably not last. The reason being is that one has to be quite expert to analyse people’s reactions to situations to deterime “norm of behaviour” and most interviewers will not have that expertise.

Candidate’s rections

I’ve asked some friends of mine what their reactions would be to being asked such questions and here are some of the answers.

a) I would assume that the interviewer was “barking” and probably be impossible to work with.

b) To the bricks question from Deloitte I’d answer “Three” and then add “Red, Grey and Brown”
but my favourite answer was:

C) Answering the “weird” question I’d say “How weird do I have to be to get the job?”