I don’t think it’s all that random at all. Not even unintentionally.
Think about what most of these are. Most of them are things that would make you a giant dick in normal context. Other are things that would actively get you fired if you regularly did them in your normal working duties.
Weird chairs! It’s making another person physically uncomfortable as a power play.
Blowing off an appointment, making a person wait needless instead of rescheduling? If you “tested” a client that way you’d be out the door.
These things aren’t puzzles, they don’t have a solution. What people are proposing is not that you hire the person that “figures it out.” Nobody says they hired the person who tastes the soup because they were smart enough to know about the soup trick.
Take the sit and wait thing. A common format of that, one I’ve ran into myself. Is to spring what’s basically a cattle call on people. Get multiple applicants to sit it out in the room together. And only interview the ones who stick it out! Cause they have tenacity! Or they’re really hungry for it!
Play out what’s actually involved.
You’re deliberately misrepresenting things to multiple applicants.
Lying to more than one person about having an appointment, getting an interview, the time it will take.
Wasting multiple people’s time, including often your own which you could be spending on something else. Like actually interviewing people.
Requiring your coworkers and subordinates to do the same.
In the end you are left only with people who are willing to put up with it. And who either can afford to waste that kind of time. Or can’t afford not to.
It’s a pretty effective, targeted approach if what you’re looking for is people you can manipulate, who won’t stand up for themselves.
Many people, maybe most these days see that sort of thing as a red flag. And will just leave or opt out. Which isn’t a problem if your standard for “good employee” doesn’t involve having other options. Which a talented, desirable hire will.
