Recruiter called up twice to tell me what the interview questions are. Suspicious?

Question

This recruiter is from one of the top 10 companies in the world. They have a branch in India, and I applied via Indeed.com. I received a call from the recruiter, who scheduled an interview for two weeks later, sent me an email, and a week later called up to confirm the interview, and told me the data structures I could expect questions about.

A day before the interview he calls up again, and says that the interview is confirmed, and says that what they've decided to quiz me about during the interview are certain data structures and design problems (he mentioned the names of those data structures).

I was surprised. Why was he telling me all this?

1. Either they were desperate to hire me.
2. Or there's some kind of fraud going on (his email id was from the company domain and the interview location is at their company)
3. My engineering was not done in Computer Science, and the position is for a software developer. But I do have 8 years of software development experience. Perhaps this recruiter is trying to save his ass for calling a non-software engineering guy for an interview?
4. Is this an ethics scenario where they will later ask me if there was anything strange about the interview process and I'm supposed to either say "Yes. They recruiter told me what questions will be asked" or to check if I rat out their employee or not?

Have you encountered such a situation or heard of one? I do hear of people getting conned in India by fake recruiters, who offer them a job and say that it'll cost them a certain amount of money. No money has been asked of me yet, but I don't understand why a recruiter would tell me what is going to be asked during the interview...

Answer 1

Why was he telling me all this?

The recruiter is trying to give you as much information as he can, so that you can prepare and do well in the interview. He is trying to help you get hired.

This is good for you (since you could land a good job). And it is good for the recruiter (since if you do land the job and if he is an external recruiter, he gets his commission. If he is an internal recruiter, it looks good as an accomplishment).

Have you encountered such a situation or heard of one?

Yes. This is very common.

Have you ever been debriefed by a recruiter after you have attended an interview? Did they ever ask you the kinds of questions you got during that interview? Knowing what one candidate was asked, it only makes sense to pass that knowledge along to the next candidates, so they can be prepared.

It's not much different than if you had a friend in the company, and asked what kinds of questions might be asked during your interview.

You should be happy about this, rather than being so worried.

I don't understand why a recruiter would tell me what is going to be asked during the interview...

A good recruiter will tell you everything they know about the company, the benefits, the department the hiring manager, and any other hiring practices they know.

This is a good thing. Try to stop worrying so much.

Answer 2

The usual practice of giving applicants a surprise pop quiz at an interview has several drawbacks. The applicants are nervous, so they might not respond as coherent as they would in a real everyday work situation. Also, you might get them about that one topic where they are quite weak and completely miss their qualifications at a similar but equally important topic.

That means such a test sometimes does not test the skills you actually want to test.

By telling the applicants in advance (some of) the questions they will be asked, they get the opportunity to prepare for them.

• You can estimate how much time they invested into the interview preparation, which proves how much they actually want the job and how well they are at self-organizing.
• You get a better impression of how well they understand a topic in depth when you give them the opportunity to make up their mind about what to say about it.
• It's a situation much closer to reality: How often do you go to a meeting where you have absolutely no idea what questions you will be asked? Usually you know what a meeting is about, who you will be talking with and what questions they will have. So you will usually prepare accordingly.

Answer 3

This isn't totally uncommon.

Google for instance was known to give study guides out for a while depending on the req they were looking to fill. It was so you could be well read on the items of discussion and be well prepared.

Answer 4

The recruiter might have direct economic incentive to give you the best possible odds of getting hired. Their salary or bonus might depend on picking out candidates who eventually get hired.

When such a system is put in place it is of course to be expected that each recruiter will put an effort into getting their candidates hired. Of course it is not hard to imagine that if a recruiter has information which could give a candidate an unfair advantage, they might step over the line and provide this information directly to the candidate.

You shouldn't think too much about whether this is suspicious or not. It may also be that the company simply believe they can evaluate the candidate better on questions which the candidate has had time to prepare for, or they might want a combination of questions with and without preparation.

The way I would recommend using that information is to take some time to read up on the subject. And if you then are asked the exact question which the recruiter told you about, then start your answer something like: "[Name of recruiter] mentioned there could be questions on [subject] so I spend a little time reading [learning material on subject]." And then proceed to present an answer which has better be good.

In taking that approach you have demonstrated:

• Honesty. In case the recruiter did step over the line by telling you, you are not using it to get any unfair advantage because you are explicitly pointing out what prior knowledge you have.
• Dedication. You spend time preparing for this interview by reading on subjects relevant to the interview.
• Learning ability. By presenting an answer to the question which is better than you could possibly have done with your prior knowledge if you had been asked the same question without time to prepare.

And if the recruiter did step over the line, you would be alerting the company to this fact, but still doing it in a way that doesn't demonstrate any suspicion towards the recruiter in case the recruiter was acting within company policy.

Answer 5

I've dealt with probably about 20 recruiters in a serious fashion (game development is real unstable, so I've worked at about 8 different companies in the last 14 years).

Only once did a recruiter give me specific info about interview questions. I got the job, but the company was probably the worst managed and least skilled place I've worked at. Consequently I left after a month due to that, and they shut down 6 months after that.

I personally would take it as a warning sign if a recruiter were to tell me the interview questions up front again!

Answer 6

My guess is that he was letting you know in advance so that you have time to prepare your answers, as one might not be able to answer questions about data structures having just been told about them. Kind of like pre-release material before an exam to give you time to prepare to answer the questions. It sounds unusual, but perhaps they have a habit of doing that with all of their employees?

Answer 7

It seems odd to have a 'test' and to know the questions. Yes, the interviewer looks better initially if you do well and that may be their motivation.

What I distill from this is that they want specific questions answered. That doesn't mean that the one who gives the best answer actually gets the job.

The recruiter ought to get credit for sending such useful and knowledgeable people but at the end of the day it may be that the candidates who can implement your ideas at the lowest cost are the ones hired - and they get no credit for the idea.

Once you propose the best Data Structure for the questions/problems and how to avoid any pitfalls, to optimize the process, a well educated Manager may have all they need to get a lesser qualified person to implement them.

Always be wary of "How would you do this" questions when it's obvious you are well experienced and educated. The answer is "hire me and I'll take a look at it".

Once you make a problem easier for everyone to visualize and do your value is decreased, especially if you expect to be compensated.

I don't know why the interviewer would want the recruiter to do that, I'd wing-it and be wary if they required you to plan and present a complete answer for them to keep and for you to discard.

Something seems fishy, yet some other answers have said that it is commonplace; don't know what that says, were they hired?