I created an account just to reply to this because I found so many errors in its logic. First, the question is not simple: it's convoluted (and there's a typo). An question that would have actually been simple is, "what are your top 3-5 decision drivers for accepting an offer from a company/between multiple companies?"
Second, leaning on the word "imagine" does nothing to "liberate" your candidate from scripted answers; it's a common way of introducing a hypothetical and could be replaced by any number of stock phrases. If you put too much stock in that phrase for the question-design, you're thinking shallowly, and doing a disservice to yourself, the interviewee, and language itself. The ironic is that in posting the question, especially if it circulates widely, you're guaranteed to eventually get scripted answers. Third, what you focus on as externalities vs. interalities seem interrelated, e.g., "I want to do X" is the same as saying "I want to work for a company that allows me to do X".
I understand the desire for interviewers to get past scripted answers and find easier ways to select the right people for the job, but questions like this aren't silver bullets. I also find it funny that people in software would be so against interviewees having scripted answers; it impresses me that people can quickly come up with quick answers to difficult questions, not because
Not wanting to end with all criticisms, I do think the last point about a question like this revealing things about the current/prior employment. If you get people talking about things they like or dislike, unless they give you patently stock crap, they're drawing off recent or salient experience.
Second, leaning on the word "imagine" does nothing to "liberate" your candidate from scripted answers; it's a common way of introducing a hypothetical and could be replaced by any number of stock phrases. If you put too much stock in that phrase for the question-design, you're thinking shallowly, and doing a disservice to yourself, the interviewee, and language itself. The ironic is that in posting the question, especially if it circulates widely, you're guaranteed to eventually get scripted answers. Third, what you focus on as externalities vs. interalities seem interrelated, e.g., "I want to do X" is the same as saying "I want to work for a company that allows me to do X".
I understand the desire for interviewers to get past scripted answers and find easier ways to select the right people for the job, but questions like this aren't silver bullets. I also find it funny that people in software would be so against interviewees having scripted answers; it impresses me that people can quickly come up with quick answers to difficult questions, not because
Not wanting to end with all criticisms, I do think the last point about a question like this revealing things about the current/prior employment. If you get people talking about things they like or dislike, unless they give you patently stock crap, they're drawing off recent or salient experience.