How to Pass an Interview, According to Ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

Microsoft and Google you know the big thing back in the day was you know these brain teaser interviews and puzzles and this and that and that has sort of evolved what were your sort of learnings about the interviewing given that you were there from the very almost the very beginning your learnings about the interview process and how that filtered candidates I think that does a pretty good job you thought the interview process worked well yeah I think you want to understand the person their motivation I think you want to understand their academic records because most of these are folks coming off college campuses and I think you want to understand people's ability to problem-solve I always gave this problem the kids I'm thinking of a number between one and 100 you can guess after each guest I'll tell you whether high or low you get it the first guess I'll give you five bucks four bucks three two one zero you pay me a buck you pay me two you pay me three and the question is do you want to play or not what's your answer of course what's my answer okay my answer I'm not trying to get you to do it on camera it's actually quite a hard part okay fifty okay higher low your low uh seventy-five your high 60 uh you are low sorry your high 55 you are low 57 you are high our low rather 58 you are low 59 yeah seven guesses Sam I got you owe me a buck so what do you like what did you learn about me just then I learned that you need to step back not in that with the pressure the cameras and really ask whether you should expect to win or lose money on this thing because I think we expect probabilistically probably there's two things that are true probabilistically will you make or lose money you will lose money why there are far more numbers on which you lose the numbers on which you win even with your strategy and number two I can pick numbers specifically that are hard for you to get okay so I should say I don't want to play the game at all how many people actually said that the number who and they're literally there's one guy interviewed at Purdue and he said well here's the answer and he actually wrote down this quickly I gave him the problem he said well here's the answer wrote it down and said this is the expected value of the game I'm sorry I'm just not fit for a job at Microsoft well not as a program right I'm not backing in other professions we're talking literally in the tech okay it turns out it's a binary search problem it's classic in computer science it's masquerading as this guessing game it was a pretty good problem teased out the way people

Channel: Bloomberg Originals

Views: 693,330

Keywords: Bloomberg

Id: svCYbkS0Sjk

Length: 2min 48sec (168 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2016