Tech billionaire Elon Musk's older answer to what question he asks candidates or applicants has recently gained attention and pushed the spotlight on job interviews.
The particular question seeks to distinguish the truth tellers from the liars, according to a New York Post report.
At the 2017 World Government Summit, Musk, who now owns auto major Tesla, space exploration company SpaceX and social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), said he has a “favourite” question for candidates at interviews.
The question? This: “Tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them.”
His reasoning? This: "Because the people who really solved the problem know exactly how they solved it. They know and can describe the little details.”
Musk is looking to check if a candidate can truly solve a problem they claimed to have solved, as per a CNBC report. “Of course you want to make sure if there was some significant accomplishment, were they really responsible, or was someone else more responsible? Usually, someone who really had to struggle with a problem, they really understand [the details], and they don’t forget,” Musk told Auto Bild.
The NY Post report noted that Musk's theory can be proved using the “Asymmetric Information Management (AIM) approach.” In the field of Applied Cognitive Psychology, AIM encourages those speaking the truth to give more details.
As per the CNBC report, using AIM can increase chances of detecting liars by 70 per cent.
Cody Porter, one of the authors of a study on the subject, published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition in December 2020, and Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Portsmouth, said that small details are the "lifeblood" when determining facts to check.
"Liars will provide little to no detail to conceal their guilt, which could be perceived as strategically withholding information when the AIM method is introduced. Their assumption here is that providing more information will make it easier for the investigator to detect their lie, so instead, they provide less information,” Porter wrote.
