How many cabs in New York City? How many tears in a bottle of wine? These aren’t just the lyrics (歌词)to a song by the Australian musician Paul Kelly. They are the kind of questions you are likely to be asked during a job interview.

In recent years, it has become common for bosses to ask interview questions that are impossible to answer. There is no right answer to these “brainteasers”. Instead, they are supposed to help an interviewer calculate an applicant’s ability to reason. What matters is how you come to the conclusion, not what conclusion you arrive at.

Brainteasers started out in management consultancy firms. Young graduates hoping to join the company would be asked: “How many phone booths are there in Manhattan?” They weren ’ t expected to blurt out (脱 口说出)a random number — instead, they were expected to show they could solve even the most stupid problem.

As consultants swarmed across other organizations, they bought their inscrutable (难 以理解的)questions with them. Now, people applying for a job in a call centre can expect to be asked how a nuclear power plant works.

While many bosses have great confidence in how good or effective brainteasers are, a research paper published in the journal Applied Psychology found they are useless for spotting the best candidate for the job. What they are great for is to make employers feel like intellectual giants.

The study’s findings are not surprising. Studies have repeatedly found that most methods of selecting job candidates are hopelessly flawed (有缺点的).Job interviews are among the worst way of picking the right person for the job.

The results of this research raise the question: if interviews are bad at picking the right person for the job, what are they there for? One feeling I have is that many job selection processes are thinly disguised (伪装的)forms of suffering, designed to make applicants feel worthless and boost the confidence of the person asking the question.

Think about the extensive list of personal skills required for even the most lowly entry-level job. Or those painful assessment centres where you are supposed to play nice with people you are competing against to get the job. And then there are the firms that ask applicants to make a presentation to convey how awesome the firms are. All these exercises seem designed not to get the best person for the role, but to assure the boss how great they are, and remind you just how lucky you would be to get this boring job.

The interview process is a part of nearly all hiring decisions. 【小题1】 The process can provide understanding about the attitude and character of the applicant.

Many people try to get interviews after seeing only a short advertisement or posting that gives only the general title and basic requirements of the job. 【小题2】   It is also for the candidate to decide whether the job is right for him or her.

【小题3】 Often, interviews are a second or final step of the hiring process, after applications and résumés have been presented. An employer may choose to interview all of the candidates, or a few top applicants that seem to have the most experience. Interviews may be conducted over the phone or in person. Phone interviews may be done to narrow the field to only a few candidates. Since the interview process may take place weeks or months after applications are submitted, phone interviews allow the employer to know whether the applicant is still interested in the job. In-person interviews permit the most detailed examination for both the candidate and the employer. 【小题4】

During the interview process, the employer may ask a variety of questions about the applicant’s motives, ambitions, experience, education, and personality. 【小题5】   Some employers may rate or grade applicants based on their answers. Ratings and grades may be weighted depending on the employer and the job. After all interviews are completed, the employer will usually give the job to the person with the highest weighted rating.

The ideology also holds that women who wish to work outside the household should naturally fill these jobs that are in line with the special capabilities of their sex. It is appropriate for women, not men, to be employed as nurses, social workers, elementary school teachers, house-hold helpers, clerks and secretaries. These positions are simply an extension of women’s domestic role. Informal distinctions between “women’s work” and “men’s work” in the labor force, according to the ideology, are simply a functional reflection of the basic differences between the sexes.

Finally, the ideology suggests that nature has worked her will in another significant way. For the human species to survive over time, its members must regularly reproduce. Thus, women must, whether at home or in the labor force, make the most of their physical appearances.

So goes the ideology. It is, of course, not true that basic biological and psychological differences between the sexes require each to play sex-defined roles in social life. There is enough evidence that sex roles vary from society to society, and those role differences that do exist are largely learned.

But to the degree people actually believe that biology is destiny and that nature intended for men and women to make different contributions to society, sex-defined roles will be seen as totally acceptable.