When I moved to Colorado and was looking for a job in the MultiValue world, I saw an ad in the local paper for a position doing Technical Training for Unidata and promptly applied for the job. My resume showed that I had held positions doing programming, system administration and technical training in a related environment so I was called in for an interview.
After answering simple questions such as could I really write a program in the server side integrated language (yes), was I comfortable speaking to large groups of people (yes), and was I sure I would be OK commuting 55 miles one way to downtown Denver (yes), I was passed to the next phase of interviews.
While I don’t remember all of the questions, I do remember one very clearly: “What would you do if you had an excellent, very productive employee and you found out they were using pirated software?” It was interesting because a) I wasn’t interviewing for a management position and b) my answer appeared to surprise the interviewer.
Here was my answer: Well, I guess I would want to find out if the pirated software was something the employee used to achieve their productivity. If so, I would admonish them for pirating it, then buy them a legal copy. If not, I would admonish them for pirating it, then ask them to remove it and review the company policies.
How would you have answered this question? What interesting interview questions have you been asked?
JBMONCO's Blog 