We’ve recently acquired a rather useless kettle in our office; it replaced the differently useless one that took around 15 minutes to heat enough water for one cup of tea…

The new kettle is a much faster boiler (I no longer have time for a loo break while waiting for my tea), but suffers from a strange design failure.  For some reason, as the kettle gets hotter, it shifts slightly on the cordless base, losing the power connection long before the water is fully boiled.  It’s easy to get round this though – you just hold the back of the kettle in place for a few seconds until the thermal cut-out kicks in as the water finally boils.

However, I think this kettle would be an ideal interview tool for new developers.  Here’s how it would work: halfway through the interview, you ask the interviewee if he (or she) would mind making a couple of cups of tea while you just answer a call…  Points are then allocated based on how they handle the kettle:

0 points – if he doesn’t even notice that it disconnected rather than cutting out properly.

1 point – for noticing it failed to boil, but just giving up

2 points – if he holds down the “on” switch to get it to boil

3 points – for realising that it’s nothing to do with the switch, and just holds the handle in place (allowing the thermal cut-out to work)

4 points – for figuring out that you can just put a paper towel under the front of the kettle, and then you don’t even need to hold it

5 points – for spotting the paper towel that was already there in place, and realising it has a purpose, so not moving it to start with!

My bet is that most of the people currently in my office would get 3 points at best.