Hotels.Ng Interview For A Genius (Part 2)

JUN 17, 2015

In this edition, we have two people with two completely different styles of replying. These were the final two selected candidates from the >40 who attempted the Q&A.

Candidate A:

Question 1: If huge quantities of a valuable material were found on the moon, and robotic miners were mining the material successfully to the surface of the moon, how would you build a logistics structure to transport the material to earth?

Answer: Working under the assumption that Elon Musk’s SpaceX project — Falcon 9-R has been fully developed, I would, depending on the quantity deploy between 1–9 reusable rockets to transport the material. The cost of the rocket fuel that will be expended is far less than the cost that will be incurred if we used traditional rockets, which are designed to break up into little fragments as soon as they contact our atmosphere.

We cannot tell at this point, how the material will react to atmospheric conditions on earth, so the first trip will carry a relatively small load, and landing will be directed towards the pacific ocean, the largest mass of water on earth, where any explosions and the like will pose minimal threat to human/animal life. Of course, any crashes into the water will likely result in a tidal wave, which will be watered by some form of embankment.

Second Question: How would you optimise street cleaners in Lagos to achieve 30% more efficiency in cleaning?

If by efficient, you mean cleaner streets, faster and expending as little resource as possible, I would first divide the entire city into identical blocks, separate the cleaners into compact teams — one for each block, each with a team head/supervisor.

The number of cleaners to be assigned to each team will be determined by the state of cleanliness (or otherwise) of each block by default and the composition of the teams would be based on the home addresses of the cleaners (to reduce the time taken to get to work).

I would then set up a points system, where the cleanest blocks for each week get 3 points each added to their group tally, and the most industrious cleaners from each team, as gleaned from the supervisors, get a point each added to their personal tally. The group with the highest points at the end of each quarter will get a wage bump for the next quarter, and the individuals with the highest points will get a bonus in addition to their group wage.

The idea is to foster a slightly competitive environment where there’s both common and individual interest in getting the best job done as quickly as possible.by Mark Essien