Recently organizations have begun using unorthodox
interviewing techniques and non-traditional interview
questions to hire applicants. The most notable example
of this trend is the so-called “puzzle interview” which
was popularized by Microsoft in the 1990s. Puzzle
interviews either ask the applicant to solve puzzles
(e.g., “Why are manhole covers round?”) or unusual
problems (e.g., “How would you weigh an airplane without
a scale?”). The goals of the present study were a) to
determine if a puzzle interview could be reliably
administered and scored, b) to examine whether variation
in puzzle interview performance was related to cognitive
ability, and c) to explore the relationships between
puzzle interview performance and applicant reaction
measures. pdf
