Might want to refer to this:

>> Hack ones and zeros and earn our respect. But hack us and earn our contempt.

By you asking the question you have already earned the interviewee's contempt - now it is only a matter of how that is expressed. Some people express it openly, others are more diplomatic. The result is the same though -- a person who is not going to take your offer.

Bottom line: the question is manipulative, and everyone with a bit of self-awareness will figure that out. Nobody wants to work for a manipulative person.

I don't see it as manipulative. I'm not a massive fan of the phrasing, but the question is just a differently-dressed version of 'what are your priorities'.

If you get worked up about that, then it would be a definite black mark against employing you. If you would refuse a job offer because of it, I would say it was a bullet dodged.

My top priority is to not have someone gaming my other priorities.

> By you asking the question you have already earned the interviewee's contempt

An interviewee who holds me in contempt for asking them a question?

They're probably not really suited to working with grownups.

It's often the case that we criticize others for our own faults, and I would apply that here.

You have asked a loaded question which has a nasty underlying implication. You might not have intended it that way, but it does have that subtext. Just to make it totally explicit, suppose I answer "money" in my top 5 then you might say "oh, he cares too much about money, he's some greedy person, not the upstanding sort we want here", but if I don't answer "money" in my top 5 you might say, "well money isn't important to you so I won't pay you what you're worth."

It's like the more-famous question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" -- which presumes a statement as fact without asserting it, and therefore is offensive and difficult to reply to.

The difference is, the factual state presumed -- even if you didn't intend it (though the author certainly did) -- is, "I am an armchair psychoanalyst. Let me psychoanalyze you." You've taken your role as "someone who will decide whether you could make this company money" and raised it to the power of "someone who might decide whether you're a worthwhile human being."

If you're not prepared to see that this might offend some people, and to apologize and admit that you hadn't thought of it that way, then you're probably not really suited to working with grownups. ^_^

You're right! Getting defensive in job interviews is a cracking idea. Job interviews are a perfect example of two-way rapport-building conversation, and should be therefore treated as a battle-field, thrust and counter thrust, until you finally defeat your interviewer in intellectual combat, emerging victorious, pious, and ... uh ... without a job.

I don't see how this could possibly have been a response to what I said, nor how I could be construed as saying that. (Actually, the closest it comes is that "You're right! X is a good idea!" is the same sort of crap that "Have you stopped beating your wife?" pulls.)

I will also reiterate that we often accuse others of our own faults. When you find yourself accusing me of "getting defensive", you should ask "is this comment that I am writing right now getting defensive?" Because it certainly sounds that way to me.

For the record, I do not think that holding you in contempt for asking a loaded question constitutes "intellectual combat." Let's review. In this hypothetical situation, we are given that you have asked, "so, imagine that you had a bunch of job offers, how would you choose between them?" and someone really responded, "so, imagine that you had a bunch of job candidates, how do you choose between them?".

You have a number of options. One is, you could handle it gracefully. You wouldn't say "oh this person is a pain in the ass!" because what they've asked is no more dickish than what you've asked, and if anything they've showed you the way in which you are being dickish. Your question was -- even though you might not have intended it -- potentially quite manipulative, and you might have significant conflicts of interest. So the graceful way is to try to recover the interview: "Okay, so yeah, I guess my question has a manipulative subtext. Sorry. I didn't mean it in that way, was just trying to be friendly and make my workplace better."

That's not what you suggested. You suggested that your reaction, facing this situation, was to say, "you probably can't deal with grownups, I'm not hiring you, get out." The irony which I'm trying to show you is: this is a childish way to handle the situation, to accuse the other of being childish rather than admit your own fault and strive to be better.

Now, would you care to tell me where I said 'Getting defensive in job interviews is a cracking idea'?

>tell me that you're gonna be a pain in the ass to work with. //

It does the reverse too surely. It tells a prospective employee that the employer is all about jumping through needless hoops - that they're going to be a pain in the ass and require things that are rather unrelated to actual productive work.

Personally I think I'd find it a turn off from either side. Is it a useful question? I can see how it could give a good indication about ability to think on the fly to provide a politic answer. If that's part of the job then it seems not completely unreasonable.

Are you saying that trying to better understand a prospective employee's motivations for coming to work is "needless hoops"?

It might be. Suppose that you're hiring service staff - a waiter or waitress is a good example. It is often better to show a professional respect for their abstraction layers than to invite them to talk about the fact that they're aspiring to become an actor or actress. Asking such a person "what are your priorities?" is first off the invitation, "bullshit me, I want to see how well you do." So they might answer "well, my first priorities are making people happy and cleaning tables." That's a hoop -- needless or not I'll leave you to judge, but demanding that they jump through that hoop to work with you could make you a pretty sucky person to work with, if that's the attitude you take towards all of your employee interactions.

Even if you sincerely care about your waiters and waitresses and want to encourage their acting careers on the side, it still stretches a bit into the unprofessional, no? You're asking them to imaginatively mix their contexts around in ways that they might not be intending to do when they work for you. The fact that you've asked me to simultaneously be frank with you about my external life, and that you also expect me to censor things which might be deemed 'irrelevant' like "well, I need a software company that I can leave after six months because I want to go and build schools in India once I get enough money," or to confess them even though they might make it much less likely for you to hire me, is potentially a needless hoop.

If you're hiring for a job where a) the person doesn't really want it, they are just desperate for a job, any job and b) you don't really care about the motivation of your staff, then yes you've got a point - it possibly is a needless hoop.

But for a lot of jobs, that's not really the case. If I was going for a job as a step up from the one I've got now, I'd be delighted to be asked this question and would give an honest answer. If my actual motivations didn't align with what the company believed it was offering (if, for instance, they were only interested in trying to push you higher and higher into management rather than allowing you to become truly expert at your current job), then I'd want to make sure I found out before I took the job.