"working on ambiguous organizational problems" is pretty much what I do. What's that gotta do with my childhood?
I hate personal interview questions with passion, because I had an unusual upbringing, and I don't want to make it my entire personality. So with questions that personal you are either going to be forcing me to lie (and yes, I have had to make up a version of my life story that's not traumatizing to the listener) or you are coming out of that interview with an opinion about me that has very little to do with how I operate professionally.
You can absolutely get a read on one's potential to do a job xyz without asking personal questions.
Yeah I've been interviewing and building engineering teams for teams for over 20 years at this point. Overall the article highlights a lot of valuable personality traits and signals you can pick up on. Asking about childhood is just weird though. I get that the target is low experience people, so there may not be sufficient work experience to fall back on, but at least keep achievement related (eg. tell me about something you worked on in a group lately...)
I hate personal interview questions with passion, because I had an unusual upbringing, and I don't want to make it my entire personality. So with questions that personal you are either going to be forcing me to lie (and yes, I have had to make up a version of my life story that's not traumatizing to the listener) or you are coming out of that interview with an opinion about me that has very little to do with how I operate professionally.
You can absolutely get a read on one's potential to do a job xyz without asking personal questions.