My Go-To Interview Hack
This one question tells me more than a dozen interview prompts ever could.
I think I’ve found the perfect interview question.
It’s fun, disarming, and (from my experience) tells me almost everything I need to know about a candidate in just a few follow-up questions.
I’ve sat through hundreds of interviews to know that most candidates come prepared with polished, prepared responses. That’s not a knock on them, it’s just how most interviews are structured. We ask questions like, “Tell me about a time you failed,” or “What’s your greatest weakness?” and in return, we get rehearsed stories that rarely help us make a truly informed call.
So I started trying something different.
Having spent years in gaming, I’d ask: “Have you ever played Destiny?”
If they say yes, I walk them into a scenario: “You're in the final encounter of the Vault of Glass raid with five strangers. What subclass are you, and why?”
Then I layer it in:
1. “How would you explain the mechanics to first-timers?”
2. “If your team keeps wiping, what do you say?”
3. “You’re four hours in, everyone’s tired. What do you do?”
Each answer reveals something different: how they communicate, think critically, collaborate, empathize.
And if they don’t play Destiny? No problem. I just swap in something else: an escape room, a pickup basketball game, a last-minute group project. The concept still works.
It’s not about the game. It’s about presenting someone with a live scenario and watching how they work through it in real time.
The right question doesn’t just give you insight into what someone says they would do. It lets you see how they think. That’s what makes it such a powerful tool, and why I’ve never walked away from this exercise without a strong yes or no.