Top 9 Reasons Why Interviewers Should Not Use Brain Teasers in Job Interview

Most of the candidates state their complaints about how if a brain teaser question rises, and their confidence and mood are on level 0. Nowadays, asking brain teasers during job interviews is just another trend without any possible reason to prove its existence. However, a high number of job candidates don't like being asked puzzles or brainteaser questions and find it annoying.

A job interview is all about how well the candidate fits in for the profile he/she has applied for primarily. If you fail to intrigue him/her to answer a question that he already has a skill for (maybe without self-awareness), you’re making a mistake just like Google and Microsoft. However, they revoked it by stopping to use these questions in the late 2000’s itself.

Replace yourself with a candidate's position, and think about what kind of questions would you like to be asked and what impression would you want to make that of the company, interviewer and the work? Relate your answers with the following points so as to ramify the complexities involved in your recruitment practices, to a righteous and fair level:

1. It's a complete waste of time: Simply do not waste time! The more time is utilized in head-scratching brain teasers in a job interview, the more ability to score the best candidate drains out. Any big company like google won’t waste a minute on brainteasers anymore for obvious reasons. If you're the best interviewer, you won't force the job candidates to answer any brain teaser question right now. Probably, the candidates will take up to an hour to answer it. So, there is no win-win. Neither the candidates were the qualified leads for your company’s employment letter, nor you saved any time and wasted it off instead. Focus on the clock more than you actually want to get an answer!

2. First impression is the last impression: An interviewer might be able to pull it off as The Interviewer, but all the kinds of behavior he/she portrays in front of the candidate go a long way. Even if a candidate aces the interview and is on-boarded, yet the remembrance of the interviewer’s character during his/her interview is now pinned in the head and this can cause a cold spark between the two in the future. Henceforth, the first impression goes both ways! Begin by stopping to ask brain teaser-based questions in the job interview.

3. Negative impact of feeling superior over candidates: To patronize the candidates by leveraging the position where the interviewer is at. This ostensible feeling of superiority over them comes with a lack of understanding of how much tense the candidates feel, with an expectation of them not able to answer it at all. This shows how much power you have, but doesn’t show how qualified you’re to judge them in an interview.

Researches also say, "Brain teaser interview questions are an example of aggressive interviewer behavior that lacks evidence for validity and is unsettling to job applicants... narcissism and sadism explain the likelihood of using brainteasers in an interview."

4. Puzzles don’t work!: Science has to tell you something, brain teasers cannot predict a candidate's intelligence or potential job candidate. There's no solid proof that tricky, puzzle-questions work in a job interview. And that’s the opposite to the ingrained feeling that they do, says professor of psychology Chris Wright, San Francisco State University. Science doesn’t stand by the thought of asking puzzles in a job interview is logical and describes critical thinking, and psychology says, it doesn’t help to breed and predict the qualified candidate to be hired. Find a great question to ask and perform on unlike this seat to be fixed once the candidate enters!

5. Don’t toss out good candidates by discouraging them: These ineffective brain teaser questions in job interviews play a huge role in discouraging the probable qualified candidates (that could’ve been yours!), to fall into the vicious cycle of the feeling of being stupid and not appropriate for any job at all, leading them to resent themselves from future interviews. This can prompt candidates to move into a resentful state of mind from appearing for future interviews because of the awareness of failure, a job interview filled with brainteasers can have in their career.

6. Company’s on-page reputation: On #1 priority is a company’s reputation. Google made amendments in its recruitment process because it realized that behavioral interview questions are the most appropriate and result-driven form of questions to be asked. In relevance to the questions and their types, they immediately start to anticipate the condition of the work environment. Often, hard-brain teaser questions predict a toxic and abusive environment. This indirect communication about the work environment makes a huge loss to the company and the interviewer.

Imagine your company’s reputation as its On-Page SEO maintenance,

• You need a responsible CEO (head)
• You need a responsible Hiring Manager (title)
• Content implies the work environment by using questions (keywords) by the interviewer throughout the interview.
• The amount of and way you talk about the people, job profiles, or work scenario (internal linking) will decide the result of the interview and your company’s reputation.
• Be truthful and no false information (meta description) to be given to the candidates just to evoke ideas that could help you but makes a negative impression on them
• Be careful of what you say about your partners and affiliates (alt tags) because this could be a turning point for you. Don’t lose partners on the basis of what you talk about them!

7. Company’s off-page reputation: Just like in Digital Marketing people describe Off-Page SEO, the recommendation matters. One bad word of mouth starts like a domino and the company is immersed in a huge loss, because the best candidates don’t want to apply, appear, join, or even be retained in or by the company. Therefore, never let the recruitment process take away your pride and reputation in the marketplace. Your company will be doomed in the long term by the damage done by these processes. So, fix the recruitment process now and transform the procedure of questions to be asked in interviews for all kinds of profiles.

8. Performance analysis: Brainteasers happen to judge the candidates by the speed they answer it, and the answer is merely simple and ridiculous. Henceforth, they're not appropriate job interview questions. Whereas it’s not a difficult pick, to judge the candidates on the accounts of Skillsets they possess and will pursue growth for themselves and in the company. Instead, it’s the most appropriate shot, because a skillset will acknowledge how fast they think about the ideas that are out of the box and extremely genius, unlike brainteasers’ ridiculous answers. As an interviewer, the skillsets-based questionnaire gives you all the right freedom to google for the right candidate for your company. So go for it!

9. Unlock their skillsets for the better of your company: The HR people and middle managers think that the candidate's critical thinking, craft and behavior can be determined by these useless puzzle questions. As a responsible and a good interviewer, you are supposed to keep a real conversation between you and the job candidate. First, scan candidates’ resumes and encourage them to unlock their own skillsets on the table in front of the panel. Candidates aren’t necessarily made to be aware of what work happens at your workplace but they can be made aware of that by asking questions in and around things that take place and shine at your workplace. This helps you and them in ways like:

• A great question is asked to them, by you
• Awareness about your company's work, duties, and scenarios
• Unlocking the skills they contain with respect to the particular question
• Now they’re self-aware of their own skills at your workplace
• You and them together, start to prep up for the latter questions
• Finally, you have matched with the right candidate

The appropriate procedure for job interviews can handle multiple candidates by a single hiring manager, so you not only save money but also hire the right candidate for your company.

The best candidate will come your way if you allow the addition of the best recruitment team or precisely, the best hiring processes. Practices will make your company perfect or imperfect at once, you must focus on revamping the recruitment structure or start it from the bottom. With the growing world in The Digital, we must not ignore the fact that AI is going to be a boost in the future and we should have our eyeballs fixed on this evolution to ensure that we always adopt the right processes and habits for our companies’ health & wealth. There are various companies that have built AI Chatbots for interviews and recruitment for companies to purge the ineffective ways of recruitment processes.