This answer could be improved by clarifying whether you have actually used this method in interviews yourself, and if so, how that worked out for you.

This seems like a good way to come across as rude and lacking any tact. Most (good) interviews allow the candidate to ask questions at the end (as you say, two way street), which is the time to inquire about the things about the company you are interested in. I'd guess that could be a good place to ask about the company conflict resolution policy or similar, but to immediately ask (the interviewer) about a time when their subordinates disagreed (when the interviewer might be just a proxy and not even your potential boss) makes you seem petty and spiteful. Quite insightful of your behaviour

@Acumenus - I was answering your since-deleted comment (you know, the one where you asked "what power do they have over me?"). Sorry you consider an answer as harassment. I'll delete my comments. Good luck with your interviewing approach.

I work at a company that uses behavioral questions. To get to a "yes hire" decision on a candidate, we need to be convinced that they have demonstrated the skills we're looking for to the appropriate bar. If you use an approach like this to "save" yourself from half the questions, that just means half the questions will be filled as "the candidate did not demonstrate this to the required bar," and you won't get an offer. Feel free to take that stand, but you should know it probably means you won't get the job.

@yshavit I have now removed the "50%" statement from the answer.

@penelope Interview structures vary significantly. There is no hard requirement of asking two token questions at the end for the sake of it; in fact it's generally a farce to do so. Tit-for-tat is hardly petty and spiteful; it's the most tightly calibrated strategy that exists. What you seem to be suggesting is to allow the interviewer to walk all over the candidate. If the candidate is rude in asking the questions, how is it that the interviewer is not also rude in asking the same questions?

@Acumenus The point of an interview is for each side to acquire the info they need to determine whether the candidate and the employer are a good match for one another. When interviewing, I'm happy for the candidate to ask the questions they need to determine whether we're the right employer for them, even if time requirements mean continuing that conversation outside the interview. But that's not what you suggested. 1/

Your answer presents these mirror questions not as a way to gather the information you need - indeed, lines like "token questions" and "farce" make it clear that you don't see value in such questions - but as a matter of gamesmanship. In an earlier edit, you offered them as a way to run out the clock on the interview. It's very unlikely that the candidate's information needs will be symmetrical to the interviewer's, so a candidate who simply flips the questions is more likely to be seen as a petulant time-waster than asking in good faith. 2/

I'll ask again: have you actually used this strategy in an interview yourself? If so, did you get hired? 3/3

@GeoffreyBrent As I see it here for the overall question, in your comments for multiple answers, you've demonstrated that you enjoy harassing me and other authors of answers. Is it not sufficient for you to downvote them and post one critical comment? I can only imagine that the interviews you conduct are a breeding ground for such harassment, including with pointless behav. questions designed to show who's boss. In fact, my answer here is a lot more genuine than the accepted answer. It is the accepted answer which instructs best on gamesmanship. Mine instructs on maintaining personal honor.

@yshavit Exactly this. When I interview a candidate, I have a list of the skills I'm looking for, and my hope during an interview is that the candidate will give me the opportunity to tick off as many of those as possible. (Occasionally they demonstrate useful skills I hadn't thought to look for, and those are great too!) Trying to dodge answering these questions is a great way to lose out to the candidate who made it easy for me to tick off those skills.

@GeoffreyBrent I highly advise finding another forum for your continued harassment, otherwise we will have to escalate the situation. You've already made your point. I even upvoted your first comment. If you're looking to check off some boxes, you don't need a candidate for it.

"I can only imagine" - and that is the problem with your answer. It's based on imagination and speculation rather than any actual experience with how these questions work and why they are asked. Noting that you've repeatedly passed on the invitation to clarify whether you've ever used these tactics successfully yourself, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the answer is "no". If you seriously believe people criticising your answer is "harassment", you are welcome to use the flag button on the offending comments to report them, and see how that goes for you.

Just to clarify, when you say "smart", do you mean "candidate who wants to get hired" or something else?

@GeoffreyBrent Apologies. Yes, by "smart", I mean a candidate who desperately wants to get hired despite the risk of an incompatible long-term outcome and a loss of personal honor.

If your advice is primarily aimed at "preserving personal honor" rather than getting hired, it might be helpful to make that clear in your answer. Otherwise some reader might mistakenly think that you're suggesting this as a way to actually get a job offer.

@GeoffreyBrent Actually it is aimed at detecting bad bosses and bad HR. I believe in good faith that avoiding working for a bad boss or bad HR is in the best interest of the candidate. For this reason, I don't need to change my answer. The original question made no mention of optimizing for getting the job alone. No clarification is warranted.

"They're not the detector of a bad personality" -- This is the core of your mistake. These questions are not meant to detect bad personality, but rather good problem-solving skills. The assumption is not "only a bad employee will have conflict with a coworker, so let's find that out", it's "anyone working on a non-trivial problem will come into conflict about something at some time, and we want to know how you resolved it." 1/2

To @GeoffreyBrent 's point, we as interviewers don't want to trick a candidate into failing. If we wanted to not-hire someone, there are much easier ways to do it than to spend time recruiting, pre-brief, 4+ hours of interviewing, and then a debrief. We want the candidate to come up with an interesting conflict about a complex problem and walk us through how they were able to come up with a great resolution to it, and even better if they learned through that and were able to apply that lesson later. We'd love for candidates to ace every question, because we want to hire people.