Is Fermi Fair? Or is there something Better?

Imagine your reaction when you step into the interview room and the interviewer asked you, "How many hairs would you need to cover the entire earth?"

That's something one doesn't usually expect, but most fall victim to. So why do they ask you such a question? The simple answer may be to just see the way you rationalize an answer you give. But does that really work in the recruiter's favour? Such questions are referred to as Fermi Questions and exercises based on such questions are known as Fermi Exercises.

Most corporates that use Fermi as a part of their hiring procedure have seen their organizations filled by individuals who have a science background and are naturally or conditionally strong in quantitative subjects. This has resulted in the talent pool being imbalanced and  starved of employees that might have average quantitative ability but might have above average creativity, reasoning and analytical abilities.

It is but natural that in any interview that has a set of Fermi questions, a student from a science background will have a considerable advantage. To overcome this limitation, companies are now turning to questions which are abstract and push you to think out of the box. They are not necessarily technical but at times silly sounding. Take this one for example:

An interviewer keeps a raw egg on the table and says, "Throw a wall on the egg, but the egg should not break". 

This question can have various answers, some very quantitative in approach, while others very creative and out of the box. In such a situation, a candidate, irrespective of his/her background will have a fair chance and this would also bring out the most ideal candidate for a company. It is not uncommon to see companies such as Puma and Nike depend on such exercises and questions to pick candidates. The wall in the question mentioned can be a wall of imagination or a paper wall. The creativity of the answers depends on the candidate's ability to think out of the box--------waaaaaay out of the box.

Posted by - Rahul Gosain