Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

People ask questions about what they understand. Their questions tell you about them, not about the stated subject of the conversation.

A few years ago in the last century, I once interviewed for an engineering job. At the time I had a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The first question the interviewer asked was,

Can you type?

After regaining my composure, I said, “Yes.”

The next question was,

How many words a minute?

I didn’t know the answer to that one as I had never done one of those tests.

The interviewer never asked any questions about engineering or anything related to the job. One possibility was that I had the credentials, so there was no reason to ask technical questions. Wrong.

The reason the interviewer asked about typing skills was because that is all the interviewer knew about the job. The engineer would have to do their own typing.

Lesson Learned: People ask you questions about the things they understand. Sometimes those questions are relevant, sometimes not.