Interviewing

Delving further into the world of pointy-haired management, I've been participating in a search committee recently for a technical support position in our department. Not having a lot of experience with interviewing, I decided to go out onto the internet to look for some good interviewing tips.

One of the things I found was a site that gives examples of the sort of things they ask applicants at places like Microsoft. Among them were questions like "How would you improve this pen?" and "Why are manhole covers round?" Presumably, these are meant to test your creative and critical thinking skills, but it seems to me that they can also serve as a test to see if the applicant can refrain from smirking at your patently silly interviewing technique.

Correct answers for the "manholes" question are things like "Because if it were square or rectangular, it could accidentally fall down the hole diagonally" or "Because it is easier to move away from the hole because it will roll." I'd be tempted to say something like "Why are manhole covers round? Because the MANHOLE is round. Duh!"