The late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs used the “beer test” when interviewing candidates for the tech giant.
When you think about a job interview, you think of sweaty hands, a new suit, and some tough questions.
But if you’ve ever had the privilege of being interviewed by Jobs for a role at Apple, you’ll know that he did things a little differently.
As most of us can argue, job interviews are very formal, which makes it even more difficult to get through the process at such a big company.
Jobs was well aware of this and wanted to make a difference.
As.com reported that Jobs wanted to “break” the tendency of people to go into interviews with a list of answers memorized in their heads, as if they were reading a script.
So Jobs decided to ditch the traditional job interview questions and keep things more casual.
When you meet a new colleague for the first time, you may think, “I want to have a beer with this person,” or “I want to take a relaxing walk and talk.”
Well, it looks like Jobs didn’t just imagine it, he did just that when he took candidates out for a walk, drank a cheeky beer, and saw if they were a good fit for Apple.
Essentially, this was known as the “beer test.”
Taking a potential employee for a walk will hopefully help them relax a little and take away all the tension that typically comes with a traditional job interview.
But if I were sitting in a pub having a beer with Apple’s CEO, I’d feel a little starstruck.
When interviewed in a pub, Jobs reportedly asked questions such as, “When was the last time you accomplished something?”
And simpler and easier to talk about: “What did you do last summer?”
We’ve heard from many managers that they tend to look for specific right and wrong answers when interviewing job candidates.
But that didn’t seem to be the case with Jobs, he was simply trying to get to know the person better.
When Jobs interviewed candidates, his goal was to find the best of the best, or “A players,” as the Apple co-founder once said.
“We’ve found that when you get enough A-level players together, once you go through the incredible job of finding these A-grade players, they really like working with each other,” he previously said. explained.
“Because they haven’t had that opportunity before.”