Chapter 1: A Bizarre Written Test

(All questions in this volume are short-answer questions; just write your answers clearly. Please complete within 60 minutes.)

Q1: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Q2: What is the biggest difference between humans and animals?

Q3: What is the fundamental reason for different ethnic groups on different continents developing at different rates?

Q4: Why did Rome fall?

......

Q100: Why can a paperclip be bent?

After Li Yu got the test, he scanned the questions and was stunned. Then he flipped the paper back to the front and checked the heading again.

He confirmed that this indeed was a written exam from a company called Third Epoch Consulting Co. Ltd, and he frowned.

Recently, Li Yu had been busy job-hopping, researching companies, submitting resumes, and even had some friends help with referrals. Over two and a half months, he had attended more than twenty rounds of interviews and written exams.

Generally, a majority of companies' written tests comprise personality assessments, professional knowledge evaluations, and some logic tests or similar.

The most nonsensical written exam question Li Yu had encountered asked him to speculate on the impact on the stock market the next day if Iron Man and Bruce Wayne went to war... That was already far-fetched, but, if pushed, it could be considered a test of the job candidate's logical reasoning (nonsense) and adaptability.

But the test he was now facing was just ludicrous.

Li Yu completely failed to see why a position in management consulting needed to know why Rome fell. Was the company expecting that a future client might include the likes of Constantine XI, the last emperor of Eastern Rome? Not to mention, these hundred questions not only involved history but also encompassed a hodgepodge of disciplines like philosophy, sociology, materials science, and more.

Li Yu even encountered questions such as "Why is the rainfall in East Asia much higher than in North Africa and West Asia, despite both being under the subtropical high-pressure belt?"—a geographical climatological question.

It made him suspect that the company wasn't really serious about hiring and was just bringing in applicants to amuse themselves in their dull workplace life.

In fact, a freshman who had come for the same position had already thrown away the paper after looking at the questions, then slammed his pen down on the table to show his displeasure.

Afterward, he picked up his shoulder bag and left without a word.

In the makeshift examination room, Meeting Room No. 3, that left only four candidates, including Li Yu.

One of them was a short-haired girl who seemed to have just left school, with the typical innocent face of a good girl.

Based on Li Yu's more than three years of workplace experience, such girls are usually very agreeable, obedient to leaders, and meticulous in their work. The downside is that they are too compliant, taking one step at a time and lacking initiative.

Furthermore, they are not good at saying no, not very capable of protecting themselves, and easily manipulated by their superiors.

If they happen to have a male leader with ulterior motives, they're likely to be taken advantage of completely, but that's none of Li Yu's business.

One of the first rules of surviving the workplace is not to meddle in others' affairs.

If school is an ivory tower, then society is a jungle.

Every animal plays its role, with some being predators and others prey, together constructing a clear hierarchical and orderly food chain.

The short-haired girl did not stand up indignantly like the male student before her, but looking at the weird questions on the test paper, she must have deeply felt the malice of the person who set the questions. Her eyes reddened slightly as she bit her lip to keep from crying on the spot.

After a moment, she probably realized that even if she tried hard, she couldn't answer many questions, and eventually chose to give up.

Gathering her belongings quietly, she left.

Now there were only three people left in the conference room: a sly-looking middle-aged man with a mustache, a slightly overweight woman in her early thirties looking tired and clearly sleep-deprived, and Li Yu.

The other two had a similar first reaction to Li Yu when they saw the questions on the paper, both stunned.

But then the mustachioed man's eyes darted around, and he took the initiative to say, "This paper is a bit strange."

Li Yu didn't pick up on his cue and had already started to concentrate on answering the questions.

Sixty minutes, a hundred questions; the time was tight indeed.

He knew that the content of this written test was nonsense, but he had no choice, the offer was just too good.

A basic salary of seventeen thousand a month, performance bonuses counted separately with the project—although he wasn't clear on how much of the bonus part was actually achievable, as more and more companies like to play word games when recruiting these days.

But even just that seventeen thousand base salary was enticing enough, let alone that Third Epoch would also fully cover social security and housing fund contributions for every employee—just this alone would beat at least eighty percent of private enterprises on the market.

Before coming here, Li Yu had also done considerable homework, searching the company on Tianyancha and Maimai, and aside from scant information on Maimai, he didn't notice any issues elsewhere.

If he had to say something, it was perhaps too clean; established in July 2019, it had been nearly three years now, and not a single piece of legal lawsuit information could be found on Tianyancha.

Law-abiding… it didn't seem like a company at all.

Additionally, as a consultancy firm, Third Epoch ironically didn't advertise much. However, Li Yu had still managed to find some of their previous cases on their official website and traced them to several enterprises and institutions they had served.

Then, on those enterprises' and institutions' official websites, he also found press releases about their collaboration with Third Epoch.

In any case, after some preliminary research, Li Yu judged that the salary and treatment offered by the company were quite trustworthy, which was also why he came to take part in this written test.

Even though the ongoing pandemic made Third Epoch's insistence on an offline written test quite peculiar.

Having applied to many companies, Li Yu had encountered bosses who paid half the wages and withheld the rest, waiting to pay it all at the end of the year under the guise of considering their employees' need for money during the New Year, so this requirement didn't seem to be anything significant.

As for the wide variety of fanciful questions on the paper, Li Yu wasn't a multi-disciplinary talent and certainly couldn't answer them all. In fact, there were so many points of knowledge involved and they were very mixed; Li Yu estimated no one could do all of them.

So he began by dealing with the questions he knew, guessed on the ones he could, and left the rest blank.

This was a test-taking habit developed by Li Yu from hundreds of exams since childhood, almost to the point of instinct.

For the first question, Li Yu pondered and chose the egg.

The reason was simple: chickens evolved from dinosaurs, and all known dinosaurs were egg-laying, so eggs certainly appeared before chickens.

For the second question, Li Yu first wrote tools, hesitated for about two seconds, then crossed it out and changed it to language.

For the third question, Li Yu wrote environment.

He didn't know the answer to the fourth question, so he wrote "internal and external troubles," a universal answer, attempting to muddle through.

For the fifth question…

Seeing Li Yu ignoring him, the man with the small mustache didn't get angry and continued to speak, "Did you notice? The issues on this paper aren't much relevant to the position we are applying for, and the HR who brought us to the conference room didn't ask us to sit separately or say that talking wasn't allowed during the test."

"You mean..." The woman who seemed sleep-deprived and was troubled by the questions on the exam was quite intrigued by the words of the man with the small mustache.

"Exactly, on the surface, this written test is assessing our knowledge on a wide range of topics, from astronomy, geography to humanities and politics, but in reality, they want to test our cooperative abilities," said the man with the small mustache confidently, revealing his conclusion.

"This paper is clearly not meant to be solved by one person alone, just like how most of the work on a regular day can't be done by an individual. Many companies greatly value the teamwork aspect of their candidates during the hiring process.

"So I propose that the three of us form a temporary group; each of us answers the questions we are good at then we compile our answers together thoroughly to pass this assessment," the small mustache suggested.

The sleep-deprived woman was persuaded by the small mustache, but upon seeing Li Yu still unresponsive, she hesitated and then said, "But... but if our answers are all the same, wouldn't that be considered cheating?"

"It doesn't matter," the man with the small mustache said with a smile, "we can just be honest with the HR and say that we worked on this paper together, and if we fail, we fail together."

He paused, then asked, "Where did you guys see the recruitment information? I received an invitation on Boss Zhipin."

"Me too," said the sleep-deprived woman, feeling like she had found an ally, "So proactive, and with such good salary and treatment, I even suspected it was a scam at first."

"Right, that job posting must have been sent out en masse. With our test being scheduled ten days later, I reckon many people have taken part in the written tests by now. Yet the recruitment is still ongoing, which means they haven't found a particularly suitable candidate. It's very likely because the previous candidates were all working solo."

Having been convinced by the small mustache, the sleep-deprived woman turned to Li Yu, "He makes a lot of sense. We might as well do this paper together."

Li Yu still didn't look up, writing as he spoke, "Third Epoch is only hiring one person this time."

Upon hearing this, the small mustache quickly replied, "Once we pass the written test, we can compete fairly in the interviews."

"Yes, fair competition," the sleep-deprived woman echoed.

When Li Yu heard this, he finally stopped writing, looked at the man with the small mustache, then turned to the sleep-deprived woman and said, "Giving up your own strengths to directly compete against someone else's strong points with your weak ones, how is that fair?"

Seeing the sleep-deprived woman still hesitating, Li Yu sighed, "How old is your child? Who usually takes care of them?"

Having put it this way, Li Yu was convinced that as long as she wasn't hopelessly foolish, she would understand.

Implicit workplace discrimination is everywhere, and she would certainly be the first to be eliminated in the interview phase unless she had an exceptionally outstanding written test to back her up, being a nursing mother.

With Li Yu's reminder, the sleep-deprived woman sobered up, then stopped talking about teamwork, and started earnestly working on the test.