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microsoft's recruiting video and silly interview questions

I noticed my old buddies over at Microsoft finally posted last school year’s college recruiting video staring the Daily Show’s Ed Helms. My favorite part of the video is when Ed uses Google to research Microsoft. Classic.

I was glad to see this video released on the internet. Microsoft has the problem of creating good marketing material but then not utilizing it properly. Good to see that their recruiting department is starting to realize that. I just hope they can get some of the other funny material out there. Last year's Napoleon Dynamite leak was a start, but Microsoft has a long way to go.

In other Microsoft news, I read this hilarious post by Jason Looney on the Microsoft Interview. Love it.

I've heard all of these questions except this one:

Two MIT math graduates bump into each other at Fairway on the upper west side. They hadn't seen each other in over 20 years.
The first grad says to the second: "How have you been?"
Second: "Great! I got married and I have three daughters now"
First: "Really? how old are they?"
Second: "Well, the product of their ages is 72, and the sum of their ages is the same as the number on that building over there.."
First: "Right, ok.. oh wait.. hmmmm.., I still don't know"
second: "Oh sorry, the oldest one just started to play the piano"
First: "Wonderful! my oldest is the same age!"

Problem: How old are the daughters?

I have no idea where to even start on this one. Ideas?

Microsoft has two great ways to attract candidates ... strategically release their stock pile of funny videos and exploit the urban legend surrounding their now archaic puzzle questions. Totally low hanging fruit which could reap great rewards.

What cool cultural tidbits and relics do you have lying around your company's halls that could be repackaged to recruit great candidates?

gretchen

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Published Thursday, July 06, 2006 10:03 AM by gretchen
Filed Under: Gretchen's posts, Jobseeker tips, Employer tips

Comments

	RickH said: Problem solution here: http://www.techinterview.org/solutions/TheOldestPlaysthePiano.html July 6, 2006 10:23 AM
	Murat Uysal said: Great post. Of course especially the puzzle lure me away. Alhoght I heard the same MIT alumni story before I couldn't remember it. And found a possible solution. Since the guy needed to say that he has an eldest doughther that means there are more than 1 solution to the problem. So we can try to find numbers that makes 72 when multiplied and also makes some number (x - door number of building) which repeats the biggest number among them twice. Only one possible solution exists to that which is (6,6,2). Any number greater than 6 can not exist twice. So the door number should be 14. Now we need to find another solution where there is only one biggest number in the solution which you can find by trial and error. I found it as 8, 3,3. I didn't check the answer with the internet yet, hope it is true. Murat July 6, 2006 10:30 AM
	gretchen said: Well, Rick, I didn't want to cheat. ;-) I purposely didn't search for the answer. I will refrain from looking at your link. :) Murat - Ok, let me see here. I did the same thing with making a list of the products for 72 ... 2 x 36, 3 x 24, 4 x 18, 6 x 12, 8 x 9. And then I broke that up into combos like 2 x 6 x 6, 2 x 3 x 12 and so forth. Although after that I'm lost. Why does the number on the door add up to 14? And what about the eldest daughter. Couldn't she be a twin .... just 5 minutes older than the 2nd? I'm lost. July 6, 2006 12:16 PM
	Adam said: The fact the knowing the total didn't help means you need to find a total of the ages that can happen in more than one way. So in general you need to look for all sums that are repeated -- but we won't need a list. As for the twin thing, I guess the candidate needs enough common sense to know that a dad with twins would be unlikely to refer to one of them as the eldest (or get one piano lessons and not the other!) -- also without this assumption an astute candidate would realise that there probably isn't a solution, so either the interviewer sucks or you need to make the assumption. With this in mind we're looking for a sum that's made in exactly two ways, one of which has eldest twins and one doesn't. As the factors or 72 are 3, 3, 2, 2, and another 2 the only way to get eldest twins is if they're 3x2 (if we don't use a 3 then the other kid is at least 9, if we don't use a 2 then the twins are at most 3 and other kid is at least 8, we can't use more than one 3 or one 2, so we the twins have to be 6) This makes the other one 2 and the total 14. Luckily there's exactly one other way to make this total -- 8,3,3 and fit the various criteria of kids under 20, right product and a unique eldest of a suitable age to start piano. July 6, 2006 1:33 PM
	Sorting It All Out said: Seems like everyone wants a piece of Jason's interview question: Two MIT math graduates bump into each... July 6, 2006 2:39 PM
	Wayne said: Actually, the first thing I did was to look up the address of the Fairway on the Upper West Side. It wasn't very helpful (2127 Broadway). July 7, 2006 4:45 PM
	Microsoft releases funny college recruiting video with Ed Helms » Darren Straight’s Blog said: PingBack from http://www.darrenstraight.com/blog/2006/07/09/microsoft-releases-funny-college-recruiting-video-with-ed-helms/ July 8, 2006 9:42 PM
	Dave B. said: Gretchen - There are two key pieces to the puzzle. First, if you list all the possible factorizations of 72 into three numbers, you will find that only two have the same summation. These two are (8,3,3) and (6,6,2), and they both add up to 14. That's the reason 14 is on the side of the building - it's the only number that has the ambiguity required by the problem. The second key piece is that (6,6,2) means that you don't have a fair "oldest" member to give piano lessons to. Sure, you could have twins and have given piano lessons only to the older twin, but to disambiguate the problem, you need to pick one factorization over the other, and the only clue you get is that a singular oldest gets the lessons. This leans you towards (8,3,3) and so it is the preferred solution. July 16, 2006 12:38 PM
	gretchen said: I still think this is a dumb question. :) July 16, 2006 9:54 PM
	http://jobsyntax.com/blogs/jobgals/archive/2006/07/06/376.aspx said: PingBack from http://frankthefrank.info/entry.php?id=kwws%3d22mrev%7cqwd%7b1frp2eorjv2mrejdov2dufklyh2533923%3a23926%3a91dvs%7b March 27, 2008 4:23 AM