Sunday, April 18, 2010

Help Wanted -- Interview Questions

Since we plan to keep the store open from 6am-10pm M-F, and 8am-?pm over the weekends, we'll need employees.  We need time during the day to purchase produce and to track inventory.  And we need to walk our dog (we're interested in hiring a dog-walker). 

We've compiled a list of interview questions for prospective employees:
* Use "discriminating" in a sentence. Use "picky" in a sentence. 

* "Economics isn't a zero-sum game, where there's a loser for every winner."  Provide an example of this dictum.  If you don't agree with it, explain why.

* Do you carry a trade deficit with a business?  Are you concerned about it? 

* Sell this dish to a health conscious customer.



* A restaurant receives a party of 20.  Each party member decides to pay with a credit card.  How does this impact restaurant operations (ie customer service) and labor costs?  (Answer this question in fewer than 5 sentences). 

* From your last grocery bill, estimate the amount of protein, calories, and carbs you purchased per dollar.



These questions have been posted on our storefront window.

We're reluctant to explain how we came up with these questions until we stop using them.

All but one of the questions above -- "sell this dish..." (used by some restaurants hiring servers) -- are original and thus, likely not to have ever been addressed online.

6 comments:

  1. is this an interview for a job at Google or a smoothie shop?

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  2. We'll address your comment in a separate post.

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  3. What kind of people are you trying to hire? If I were to go through this interview process, I'd expect a pretty sizeable paycheck.

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  4. We're trying to hire people who aren't robots or think that their pay should be tied to what they subjectively think of an interview process instead of the value they think they can offer.

    We'll explain more in another post.

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  5. I like these questions. People become robots when they're treated like robots.

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  6. In this economy, it's good to be choosy. There's an article today in the Seattle Times about a job ad for a poop scooper at a kennel. There were 300 applicants, including ex-teachers and a financial controller.

    You'll probably end up hiring college kids. They're not as set in their ways and there are enough who won't be intimidated by these questions.

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