Brain teaser: How many haircuts do you think happen in America every year?

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haircuts_google

Google’s infa­mous brain-teas­er inter­view ques­tions don’t pre­dict per­for­mance (Busi­ness Insider):

“Google built a rep­u­ta­tion for ask­ing brain-teas­er ques­tions like “How many hair­cuts do you think hap­pen in Amer­i­ca every year?” They’re sup­posed to test, in the­o­ry, how you tack­le a big prob­lem ana­lyt­i­cal­ly. In the hair­cut exam­ple, you would like­ly start with the pop­u­la­tion count and mul­ti­ply by how often you think peo­ple get a hair­cut every year…

“Every­one likes to ask case ques­tions and brain-teasers. It turns out our data shows that does­n’t actu­al­ly pre­dict per­for­mance. There’s no cor­re­la­tion with your abil­i­ty to do that,” said Las­z­lo Bock, Google’s SVP of Peo­ple Operations…

“Part of the rea­son is that those are tests of a finite skill, rather than flex­i­ble intel­li­gence which is what you actu­al­ly want to hire for,” Bock continued.

To screen for prob­lem-solv­ing, a bet­ter ques­tion is “Give me an exam­ple of a hard prob­lem you solved” so the inter­view­er can then drill down for spe­cif­ic examples.”

To learn more about Google:

To find fun brain teasers — use­ful once you are in Google, if not before 🙂

And, to learn more about haircuts…