"Tell us a story about how you took down production."<p>A reasonable question. But if you really need to reject the candidate (for instance, if you're attempting to resist, or provide cover for resisting, someone brought in e.g. by the bad kind of nepotism), no matter how much they talk about how it led them to build systems to prevent similar disasters, as an interviewer you can selectively choose to focus on the mindset that led them to break the system in the first place.<p>In general, though, if you're looking for ways to disqualify a candidate based on other than merit, you should examine your own biases against the candidate. Don't be evil.
A very long time ago, for a job not in the software industry, I had to take one of those multiple-choice exams they use to screen employees. There were probably 100 questions. One of the questions was something like "Have you ever been dishonest?". I probably dishonestly answered that question (with a no) and was thus probably red-flagged by the "Machine" and never proceeded in the interview process.
None! There's no question that is needed to reject you. You can answer all questions correctly and be rejected. There's no reason to really think too much of this, go in, answer to the best of your knowledge and be a pleasant person. If the interview decides to reject you due to any prejudice of their own, you probably escaped a nightmare, and the companies loss.
A long while ago I was in an interview where the interviewer retold a story about a white (yes, skin color was relevant) adventuring motorcyclist in Africa. Anyways, he was driving by himself in southern Africa in Namibia or so. Then outside a village the motorcycle broke down and he got into a horrible accident that broke his leg.<p>The villagers came and saw that he was wounded. So they started to take pieces of his packing, of his motorcycle and even his expensive wrist watch. He laid there in pain outside the village for several hours as none of the natives helped him. Until another white motorcyclist came and helped him up on his bike and drove him to a hospital. The end.<p>To this date I have nfc why he told me this story or why he thought it was relevant in a developer interview. Fairly sure it was an elaborate test though with only bad answers possible.
How many years of PHP/JavaScript/Python/C++ experience do you have?<p>We are looking for a lot of experience in the latest version using the latest testing and development practices. We don't want to hire people with bad habits.
The double bind :) You've got to love a good double bind.<p>An interviewer doesn't really have to ask you anything. They can just decide on the basis of what you didn't say instead.<p>"When asked about his JS experience, he mentioned Y without mentioning X."<p>A more interesting question would be, can you think of a double bind that allows the interviewer to take either side without looking like a hypocrite over multiple interviews?
I found from my own experience both on the hiring side and the candidate side, that there isn't always such a good correlation between getting answers right and being hired or not. Sometimes you get everything right and still don't get the job. On the other hand, sometimes someone might fail miserably and still get the job. It's not like school, where everything is objective.
"Have you ever used company computer to search for information unrelated to your job?"<p>Yes => We cannot hire you<p>No => Liar! We cannot hire you.
Not an interview question itself, but rejecting based on lack of "culture fit" seems to be pretty standard practice. I'm not sure why such a trick question is even needed however, since regardless of how the candidate does the decision to hire is ultimately a black-box that the candidate won't know anything about.
This is evil. But, perhaps also inevitable. "Would you mind providing a DNA sample"? You can always find some "liability" within the multitudes of potential markers.<p>See <i>Gattaca</i> for a vision of this possible future ;)
Any question works for this:<p>• What's your favorite color?<p>• What are your weaknesses?<p>• What are your strengths?<p>• When's the last time you did something unethical?