I’ve just started doing practical interviews. I basically get really young people with little overall experience and I just want to know if they can do common technical tasks.
So one question is to literally have them explain how to tighten a bolt. One person failed.
To be fair, that’s a very open ended question. I mean, what kind of bolt are we talking about? A standard lag bolt? If so you don’t tighten it! That’d be a trick question! You tighten the nut. Same thing applies with car wheel bolts. Tricky tricky!
Is it a hex bolt that also has a cross head? How tight are we talking?
I’m just going to assume bolts of lightning and Usain Bolt are off the table.
Not really in a bolt tightenning domain, but I have done technical interviews for a lot of devs including junior ones, and them asking all those questions about the task is something I would consider a very good thing.
At least in my domain the first step of doing a good job is figuring out exactly what needs to be done and in what conditions, so somebody who claims to have some experience who when faced with a somewhat open ended question like this just jumps into the How without first trying to figure out the details of the What is actually a bad sign (or they might just be nervous, so this by itself is not an absolute pass or fail thing).
I did actually make the mistake of asking just “which way do you turn a screw” once and the person had the sense to ask “to tighten or loosen it?”
