I’ve since evolved a little since I posted this and would like to hone my focus of this post to a clearer target: Look For Ridiculous instead.
This is my hands-down, go-to interview question to weed out non-technical candidates. I have had such great success with this interview question and have shared it with other colleagues who have experienced equal success that I think it deserves a place on this blog. I’ve talked about this before, a little over a year ago is when I made my first public announcement of my new-found favorite interview question:
How do you open notepad on windows?
I typically preface the question with a short disclaimer like, “This question is a bit unorthodox and there really isn’t a wrong answer, having more than one answer is also equally acceptable…” This sets the stage for the actual question which I’ll phrase like “On a windows machine, regardless of version specifics, how do YOU open windows notepad?”