In a high school psychology class, our teacher, the football coach, assigned us to build a contraption that would allow us to drop an egg from the roof of the school and have it land unbroken. It was a stupid assignment then. It was a psychology class, not a physics class, and he didn’t even have us work in groups, which could have (ostensibly) taught us something about the psyche of other high school seniors who really just wanted to graduate.
I objected. He told me I was stupid. And then our next assignment was to build a bridge out of drinking straws. I’ve forgotten his name, which is good, because if I hadn’t I’d be tempted to call him out for his ridiculous “teaching” attempts, which were nothing more than a way for him to feel powerful as he laughed when people’s bridges were crushed under his weight, or their eggs splattered on the ground.
To keep reading, click here: Are Your Interview Questions Creative or Crazy?
1) You were able to take a “psychology” class in HS?
2) Your teacher was the football coach.
3) The exercises belong in a structural engineering class. http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/05/engineering-bridge.html
4) This is not only a good story to precede a segue into the Interview questions topic, it could form the basis for so many other topics. Bad managers. Mislabeled projects. Experience not matching current tasks. …
1. Yes. But I didn’t learn anything. See number 2.
2. Yes. He was hired to coach football, but then, of course, he needed to teach SOMETHING. He didn’t do a good job. He really did yell at me in front of the whole class telling me I was stupid. Then I wrote an editorial for the school paper about bad teachers. Heh. Don’t miss with the editor of the school paper.
3. Exactly.
4. It’s an excellent story and I’d totally forgotten about it until I read that HBR article.
Hmm. Since the job candidate should also be interviewing the interviewer, what about having a set of crazy questions for them? And each time they ask one, you ask one back. That would probably give you some interesting reactions to evaluate.
And of course, if they asked no crazy questions then you could stick to the normal ones that everyone should be asking.