Why Steve Jobs used a ‘beer test’ while interviewing people for jobs at Apple

It's been 15 years since Steve Jobs passed away but apart from his legendary legacy with Apple, he is also remembered for a pretty incredible interview technique.

Preparing for an Apple interview back in the day was no doubt an arduous and stressful process, but it turns out that you needn't have gone through all that work.

A lot of the time, when Jobs was still in charge of the hugely successful technology company, he would make sure to interview potential candidates himself but he had an unusual 'beer test' method.

The innovator died on this day back in 2011 and sadly his old interview technique of taking people out for a beer and getting to know them on a personal level seems to have died out as well, with the vast majority of workers these days rarely ever meeting their CEOs.

But for Apple employees under the reign of the late Steve Jobs, sinking a pint with the CEO was simply part of the process, although you might have wanted to take it easy unless you wanted to end up at karaoke or in a kebab shop.

Nicknamed the 'beer test', Jobs' aim was to get to know his candidates outside of their scripted answers, surprising his potential employees by taking them out for drink and getting to know them beyond their strengths, weaknesses and phony five-year-plans.

Steve Jobs was able to make Apple the major success in the technology world (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

But what was Jobs' reasoning for this wacky interview tactic?

While the scenario sounds like the perfect set up for a trick question, it seems like Jobs had no intention of catching candidates off-guard. Instead, he would hit them with queries such as: 'What did you do last summer?' or 'When was the last time you accomplished something?'.

He didn’t exactly look for any right or wrong answers either, he was just looking to get to know the candidate better.

Now you may be wondering what Jobs aimed to get out of such a set-up, considering that companies, particularly world-leading, ultra competitive ones, tend to hire the best person for the role - not those who might make for great drinking buddies.

Jobs did previously explain the sort of candidate he'd be looking for when hiring, as well as why it was so important to have the right group of people working together.

"I found that when you get enough A-players together, when you go through the incredible job of finding these A-players, they really like working with each other," he said, for those who are unfamiliar with the term 'A-players' it's business speak for top performers in a company.

Beers with the boss? Sounds terrifying (Getty Stock Images)

"Because they’ve never had the chance to do it before."

And it would certainly seem like this unorthodox approach might just work, judging by the amount of Apple products you see out and about in the wild everyday.

Although you'd imagine that any employee who made it to the fabled 'beer test' most likely went through several rounds of gruelling conventional interviews first.

It would seem that Jobs' curveball questions didn't cease with an offer of employment either. Former senior vice president of industrial design and chief design officer Jony Ive revealed that the late CEO would enquire about the number of times he'd said 'no' every day.

According to the former Apple staffer, Jobs' view was that saying no would 'create focus', leading to increased productivity and (perhaps most crucially) increased output.