alt Hacker NewsRequiring to disclose your breakfast habits for a job application has not anything to do with your merit to the company, and gives grounds to the possibility of choosing people on sympathy to their answers to that question. It became frowned to include a picture into a CV, because this feeds implicit biases, why should that be any different with alimentary behaviour?
Honestly for dealing with job application spam, this sounds like a neat way to handle this, but without that context, it is just weird. Also it seems to be obsolete against people using LLMs for these applications, I expect them to be able to just invent an answer for that question just fine.
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Just the fact that you're ready to go all-in arguing about a detail of small talk and start talking about legality and such, is employability poison. And that's something interviewers are looking for. I agree that it's a weird question, but one that the person being interviewed can easily just pass without it being a big deal.
The other poster said it's just a question to easily filter out applicants who aren't paying attention, and it seems as good a method as any. Say "just a cup of coffee" and move on. If the interviewer continues to talk about breakfast or other irrelevant stuff, then I'd just end the conversation. But they can have one for free.
But on the subject, I have no idea how companies manage to screw up their hiring process this much. I used to sometimes interview and hire people and found it to be the easiest thing ever, and I never had the need to do these weird games or more than a phone interview to find great employees. How hard is it to just focus on the exact task of the job and find a candidate who understands it and has a good attitude?
You can just lie. There is literally no wrong answer here.