“What new things can a candidate who will later become an employee teach the company?” How would IT professionals answer this question at an interview

«What new things can a candidate who will later become an employee teach the company?» — this is the question the CEO asks, writes Polina Levitskaya.

Answer options from IT community specialists:

1. «It is unlikely that a company as a legal entity is capable of learning anything — unfortunately, it has no consciousness,» — Oleksiy Zadorozhny, QA Student and SysOps Engineer.
2. «I have an exotic knack for swearing in several languages ​​(among the interesting ones: sign language, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, High Valyrian, and the dialects of the Slave Bay) and the team definitely doesn’t know how to do that. Not that it’s the limit of my abilities, but a stupid question requires a stupid answer,» — Olga Barvinok, Level Designer.
3. «Critical thinking. Because this is not a question about serious matters, but about my stress resistance and speed of thinking. And since we have already found out that I have them, let’s get to the point,» — Natalia Sokolova, HR.
4. «I will teach employees not to take kickbacks,» — CMO, Head of Marketing, Ivan.
5. «For some reason, I can’t help but want to refine the TOR to „something“. So you can teach something non-core, not related to the company, work. Find out what exactly the „company“ can do and what it knows, find industries that haven’t been used before and go teach „how to distinguish parsley from cilantro“,» — Ksenia Sokolovska, Business analyst.
6. «You could also say: don’t ask stupid questions at interviews. But that’s the end of the conversation right away,» — Andriy Sartek, Front-End Developer.
7. «We need to ask: what does the company already know how to do?» Andriy also adds.
8. «I can teach a company how to explain complex things to customers in simple words so that they become regular partners. But in that case, I will ask the CEO a counter question about what the company will teach me, I wonder if he will find the answer or turn red as a tomato from my „arrogance“,» — Oleg Nemirovsky, Sales manager.
9. «I can teach you to look for a way to solve the problem, not the culprit. It’s much more effective,» — Yevgeny Maslak, Android Developer.
10. «Count an hour of gossip in the company, for example, or ineffective meetings/interviews, and other time wasters that do not add value to the business. And how much does an hour of CEO and his interview cost?» — Olena Fil, CEO of HR Diamond Partner.

Instead of a conclusion

There are many possible answers to fantasize about, but probably the main one is: «What is the purpose of this question?» Technical Writer Serhiy Protsenko suggests that it is asked to see the person’s reaction and to hear what they can tell you about something that you won’t find on the Internet when you search for «how to pass an interview.»

Dmitry Malashevsky, Chief Revenue Officer at nCube, adds that in a company with 30,000 employees, the CEO will probably only personally interview C-level specialists. «Therefore, at a minimum, the top is expected to have sufficient flexibility and speed of thinking to provide some kind of comprehensive answer, to emphasize their greatest value and expertise,» he notes.

In general, before teaching something, Android Developer Yevgeny Maslak logically suggests, you need to figure out what the company already knows and what it lacks.

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