How about some light reading today?
Since one of our secondary goals is to help managers interview candidates better, I thought I'd share what I highly recommend you NOT do during interviews: Ask ridiculous questions! Ironically, this is exactly what some of the most prestigious companies do. But, keep in mind...they can get away with it! Candidates are lining up to get into some of these companies, which are arrogant enough to ask some pretty strange questions. It's almost seen as an initiation or hazing.
I found these questions on a site developed by a company called Glass Door. This company helps job candidates take a peek into their prospective employer's interview process through the help of past interviewees posting their interview questions on the site.
Here are some of the strangest interview questions encountered over the last year:
- If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?
- How many ridges are there around a quarter? (Reportedly from Deloitte)
- What is the philosophy of martial arts? (A spokesperson for Aflac, where this question was used, says she hopes the candidate quoted Kwai Chang Caine from the 1970s TV show Kung Fu: “I seek not to know the answers, but to understand the questions.”)
- Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last ten years. (Reportedly from Boston Consulting)
- Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten...how weird are you? (Reportedly from Capital One)
- How many basketballs can you fit in this room? (Reportedly from Google)
- Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest three horses. In each race, only five horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required? (Reportedly from Bloomberg LP)
- If you could be any superhero, who would it be? (Reportedly from AT&T)
- You have a birthday cake and have exactly three slices to cut it into eight equal pieces, how do you do it? (Reportedly from Blackrock Portfolio Management)
- Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make? (Reportedly from Facebook)
- If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner? (Reportedly from Amazon)
- An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear? (Reportedly from Epic Systems)
- There are three boxes: One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of its box. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly? (Reportedly from Apple)
- How many traffic lights are in Manhattan? (Reportedly from Argus Information and Advisory Services)
- You are in a dark room with no light. You have 19 gray socks and 25 black socks. What are the chances you will get a matching pair? (Reportedly from Convergex)
- What do wood and alcohol have in common? (Reportedly from Guardsmark)
- How do you weigh an elephant without using a weighing machine? (Reportedly from IBM)
- You have eight pennies. Seven weigh the same, but one weighs less. You also have a judge's scale. Find the penny that weighs less in three steps. (Reportedly from Intel)
- Why do you think only a small portion of the population makes over $150,000? (Reportedly from New York Life)
- You are in charge of 20 people. Organize them to figure out how many bicycles were sold in your area last year. (Reportedly from Schlumberger)
- How many bottles of beer are [consumed] in the city [in a] week? (Reportedly from Nielsen)
- What’s the square root of 2000? (Reportedly from UBS)
- A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60 mph. Another train leaves Houston for San Antonio at 80 mph. Houston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100 mph, and turns around and flies back once it reaches the Houston train, and continues to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide? (Reportedly from USAA)
- How are M&Ms made? (Reportedly from US Bank)
- What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your Uncle? (This question comes from Volkswagen)
How did you do? In the next edition, I'll share the answers to some of these questions.
Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.
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