In an expansive interview with Fortune displayed on 15 different "slides," Steve Jobs says this about interviewing potential employees:
How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they're challenged? Why are they here? I ask everybody that: 'Why are you here?' The answers themselves are not what you're looking for. It's the meta-data.
It's the meta-data. I like that. I once mused that asking the question, "Do you have self-confidence?" can be an effective interview question not for the answer that's given (everyone will say yes) but for the meta-data that comes with the candidate's answer: body language, tone, approach, etc.
Jobs also says in the interview that when it comes to choosing strategies, "We do no market research. We don't hire consultants."
Once again I question the use of the word “meta.” The right word here is “implicit” (vs. the explicit data of the answer itself).
Here’s a meta-question: does using the prefix “meta” make Jobs’ quote seem smarter, even if he is using it incorrectly?
By the way, not everyone will answer “yes” to the self-confidence question. The people you hang out with will.
What confuses things is that the technical term “metadata” means what Jobs
is saying:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-data
What Jobs is saying is that the actual answers to the questions are not the data he’s looking for. The data he is looking for is, for example, “How do I feel about this person?” The answer to *that* question is not data about the answer to the original question (as the Wikipedia definition requires). It’s just different information. *Implicit* information.
If he had said “I look at body language to determine whether the answer is sincere,” then THAT would be meta-data, because it is actually information about the answer (it would also be implicit).