Be honest with yourself, are you slightly bored of being given mundane interview answers? What if you could get more out of potential candidates simply by asking the correct questions?
We’ve seen businesses from Google to Goldman Sachs and Zappos use strategic and tactic-based interview questions to learn how well a person knows their craft, and to examine how they would react to situations outside of their comfort zone. These questions are prepared by analysts to help employers find the right fit, not just within the role but within the company.
Here are 25 of the most weird and wonderful questions that have been asked during an interview, from companies such as Uber, British Airways and Google.
- A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here? source
- What are the four steps to put a deer into the fridge? source
- If you were a baseball player what would your walkup music be? source
- How would you paint a room that requires 4 gallons of paint when you only have 2 gallons? source
- Why are you wearing a jacket and tie? source
- Suppose you had eight identical balls. One of them is slightly heavier and you are given a balance scale. What’s the fewest number of times you have to use the scale to find the heavier ball? source
- Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses? source
- If you had $2,000, how would you double it in 24 hours? source
- How do you explain a vending machine to someone who hasn’t seen or used one before? This one is asked by a Google Data Analyst. source
- Sell me on one idea, and then sell me on the opposite of that idea.”
- What’s the biggest lie on your CV? source
- If you could steal credit for any great piece of art, song, film, book etc which one would you claim? source
- Do you consider Monopoly to be a game that you play with friends or enemies? source
- “You are stranded on the moon with a group of other astronauts and you need to travel 200 miles back to base, here is a list of 15 items salvaged from the wreckage of the spacecraft you were travelling in. List them in order of importance.” source
- What does social justice mean to you? Asked by a content marketing manager at Thoughtworks. source
- On a scale of one to 10, how weird are you? Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos likes to ask this question so he can find the right “fit”. source
- How would you explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew? source
- If you were written about in the newspaper, on the front page, what would the headline say?
- If you were a brick, what kind of brick would you be? source
- How would you handle it if your boss was wrong? source
- How many quarters (placed one on top of the other) would it take to reach the top of the Empire State Building? source
- How many gallons of white house paint are sold in the United States each year? source
- What would you ask the CEO if you met him one day?” Asked by a Performance Analyst at British Airways. source
- Asked at IBM: How many hours would it take to clean every single window in London? source
- Write an equation to optimize the marketing spend between Facebook and Twitter campaigns, asked by a data analyst at Uber. source