How would you Move Mount Fuji?

You probably know the clichés about how fast things are changing and how everything you learned in school will be out of date in 5 years (give or take). Children entering schools today will retire at a rough estimate in the year 2065, so if we do not know how the world will look in 5 years how can we know how to prepare them or ourselves for the future? And as a starting point, it is becoming increasingly important for us to demonstrate creativity in order to give a good impression on job interview. So today’s challenges to meet with tomorrow are manifold.

For years, Microsoft, Google, Apple and other high-tech companies have used riddles and logic puzzles like those ones mentioned in Poundstone’s book for notoriously grueling job interviews. These "puzzle interviews" have become known as a hot new trend in the recruitment process to filter out the most innovative and creative candidates of their category. Employers are increasingly using these ‘puzzling’ questions to measure job candidates' creativity, imagination, and problem-solving abilities -- qualities that are needed more than ever to survive in today's hypercompetitive global marketplace.

Just about everybody would agree that in the modern competitive world of business creativity is essential to success. Yet many leaders of organizations and educational systems are hindering original thinking by not giving people the room they need to be truly creative. William Poundstone provides strategies for job seekers about to encounter questions that measure their ability to be innovative.  Recruiters want to see that candidates are able to develop the capacity for radical originality, and that they possess the potential to re-imagine and reinvent the world in totally unexpected ways. Poundstone suggests that if you are someone who takes chances and risks that it is more likely you will come up with something original.

Here  is just a sneak preview of the questions Poundstone introduces to in order for readers to see how some recruiters measure  candidates’ potential for being creative and original:

How do they make M&Ms? Why do mirrors reverse right and left instead of up and down? How many piano tuners are there in the world?

Surely, you may be perplexed at how to answer these questions, but what's interesting to note is that the author spends a fair chunk of the book discrediting one’s performance in solving such puzzles as a true measure of his or her ability to think outside the box, or of their IQ. He even mentions that interviewers “don’t know the correct answer and that it makes no difference that they don’t know it.” (p. 8). In the second half of the book, however, he goes on to give sample answers to such questions which may inadvertently lead the reader to assume that there are actually right answers for these questions, as he mentions examples of “good” answers, and answers that he would not deem fit. Yet one golden rule Poundstone stresses is that for the purposes of a job interview, "reasoning is the answer.” Essentially speaking, he suggests that if you can reason your way through the answer then you will have the upper hand.

Poundstone additionally highlights two reasons why puzzle interviews have caught on in the recruitment process at various high tech companies. The first is that most senior executives, including Bill Gates, are puzzle solvers and game players by nature, and have a general interest in strategizing answers for abstract and intriguing questions. Another reason is cultural. Poundstone quotes Chris Sells, the manager of a website devoted to this style of  interviewing,  as noting that the questions are designed to extract the ideal workers that think in a certain way, "They are people who have spent some of their time, while growing up, obsessing over logic puzzles, stretching their brains." He later goes on to say that “New college grads consider questions about their experience unfair simply because they don’t have any. Geezers like me love these kinds of questions.” (Pages 44; 134)

Poundstone writes with a mild sense of humor and good insight about the corporations that use this technique to recruit talent. The book is a suitable read for both for the casual reader as well as enthusiastic problem solvers who are measuring their performance or preparing for an interview.          

If you are reading for the purpose of practicing your skills in order to nail your next job interview and are pressed for time, then you may want to reference the full puzzle at the end, since Poundstone just references pieces of this puzzle in the chapters throughout the book. Since being informed of all bits of data related to a puzzle is ideal, it caused me a bit of confusion as the questions were scattered  throughout the first half of the book, and as  I could not  recalled each  in detail,  I had to  spend time a bit of time searching piecing it all together.

But remember, whatever you take away or learn from this book, you can always be sure that you tap into your creative thinking when you solve a puzzle.

So now for the big question: How would YOU move Mount Fuji?

My answer: By doing nothing. As the earth revolves about its axis and follows its orbit, Mt. Fuji moves with the planet, progressing through days and seasons along with the rest of the planet.

About this book:

Title: How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

Authors: William Poundstone

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (May 1, 2003)

Hardcover: 288 pages

Isabella J. Veronesi

This article is dedicated to our monthly newsletter “Leaders Wisdom Journal”. To Subscribe.

Other articles of the same issue:

Thomas Rabe (Bertelsmann): "Innovation is not a question of a company’s size. It’s a question of its freedom."

Learn from Kanye West on Pushing Boundaries

Ten Innovators from Traditional Industries

Wisdom on Pushing Limits

The Beauty of Being a Misfit by Lidia Yuknavitch (TED Video)