Recruiter shares thoughts on the question Elon Musk asks in every job interview to spot a liar
A recruiter has shared her thoughts on the one question Elon Musk is said to ask in every job interview in order to spot a liar.
As the founder to SpaceX and the CEO of Tesla, it's fair to say Musk is pretty experienced in the business world.
Musk's interview technique
His years in the industry mean Musk will have dealt with all kinds of employees over the years, so he came up with a trick to try and weed out any liars during the interview process.
In an interview with Auto Bild in 2017, Musk revealed that he always asks: "What are some of the tougher problems [you've] dealt with and how [did you] dealt with those?'"
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He added: "And how they made decisions at key transition points."
Musk explained at the time that responses to this question indicate whether the person is lying, because if someone has 'had to struggle with the problem they really understand it and they don't forget'.
To determine whether this trick really works, UNILAD asked senior executive recruiter Eleanor to share her thoughts on Musk's technique, and she revealed that it's not necessarily something that's unique to the businessman.
Does the question really work?
"I agree with [the question]," Eleanor said. "I would to ask [my candidates], 'What is your biggest failure?', 'What is the thing that's literally kept you up at night and you've gone, oh my god, like I'm literally gonna die, that's the worst failure ever?'"
By asking questions about struggling with problems or about times they have failed, Eleanor said you 'do determine whether they're honest or not'. But not only that - you also determine if they're 'self-reflective'.
"If they're not self-reflective, they think they've never made a mistake, or they blame everything on everyone else," Eleanor said. "That's a massive red flag."
"So to ask somebody genuinely about their challenges determines their honesty, and also their humility, and their self-reflection skills as well.
"I really like that [question], and do that one myself."
Eleanor expressed belief that asking about your failures isn't necessarily a question that's more useful in the tech sectors that Musk works in, saying it's instead generally a good way to get to know people and learn about their experience.
How should you respond?
So if you do find yourself faced with a potentially challenging interview question - or if you somehow happen to land an interview with Musk himself - Eleanor has one key piece of advice.
"Take a few seconds," she said. "For God's sake, take a few seconds. The amount of candidates I ask a question to, and they blurt the answer out straight away - I'm like, 'Just relax. You haven't even thought that through, you haven't had a minute let your brain compute it, let alone come up with a good answer'."
"You can sit comfortably in silence for like five seconds," Eleanor continued. "And that's normally enough for your brain to think it through. You can sit in silence, you can glance around thoughtfully, you can tap your lips, you can go 'good question' - any of these little buffers give you like five to 10 seconds for you to actually just think it through.
"Sometimes the first thing that jumps into your head, it's not necessarily the best answer - take a second, it's fine. Or even say, 'oh, that's a really good question, let me take a second to think about that'."
Be yourself
Overall, Eleanor stressed the most important thing to do in an interview is to 'relax' and 'be yourself'.
"We're not asking in an interview for you to tick 100 out of 100 boxes. Sometimes we know you're going to tick 80 and that's fine," she said.
"So be honest, and it's absolutely fine to say, 'Oh, I actually don't know that. I haven't done that before, but this is how I try and find out if I was in the job'.
"You're there to make yourself look good, but don't blag too much."
So there you have it - bring on the interviews!
Emily Brown