What interview questions do you ask?

Malcolm Gladwell asks whether you know how to drive a manual transmission:

In Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross’s excellent new book, Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creators, and Winners Around the World, the authors suggest alternative questions for job interviews. For example: What tabs are open on your browser right now? (In my case: a draft of an upcoming Revisionist History episode, a Youtube video of a Canadian businessman who personally sponsored 50 Syrian refugees, a journal article on the merit of homework, and the Car and Driver review of the new special edition Golf R.)

Cowen and Gross think this kind of indirect question is a better way of assessing someone’s interests and curiosity than simply asking them a direct question. I agree. The standard interviewing process—with its conventional set of easily anticipated questions—is just too easy to game. (“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” “In your chair!”)

This reminds me of a question I used for years in interviewing potential assistants: Do you know how to drive a manual transmission? If you said no, you didn’t get hired.

I know that sounds terribly arbitrary. But here’s my reasoning. It is not necessary to know how to drive a stick in the 21st century—particularly if you’re 22 years old. So the only people who do are those who are willing to take the time to master a marginally useful skill. Now why would a 22-year-old do that? One reason is that they like knowing how to do things that most people do not. Another is that they realize that the most fun cars in the world to drive are sports cars, and the most fun sports cars to drive are the ones with manual transmission, and they like the idea of being able to turn a rote activity (driving) into an enjoyable activity. I want to work with the kind of person who thinks both those things.

Interesting. I like the idea of alternate questions for a job interview.  What do you ask potential associates?