Quotable Quotes: Interview Questions
by Miki Saxon
Interviewing; everybody’s favorite thing, right up there with root canals and ironing. Having spent more than ten years as a headhunter (my term of preference) I’ve heard a lot of off-beat, weird and totally illegal. That was a long time ago and by comparison the list on BNET is tame, but still outside the ordinary.
A number of the questions were from high tech companies and turned on math, but I wonder if they use the same questions for marketing and other critical non-tech functions—or maybe they don’t consider them critical.
- How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine? (Reportedly from IBM)
- 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)
- How many basketballs can you fit in this room? (Reportedly from Google)
The next question strikes me as a hot potato, at the least, or a political grenade depending on the response.
- Why do you think only a small portion of the population makes over $150,000? (Reportedly from New York Life)
The supposed point of this question it to see how candidates would handle a job for which they had no preparation or experience. I wonder how well it works, especially since so many young people work in pizzerias during school—but maybe not in Germany.
- What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle? (This question comes from Volkswagen.
I like this one, but you have to wonder what happens when the candidate names a superhero and the interviewer isn’t familiar with it.
- If you could be any superhero, who would it be? (Reportedly from AT&T)
Considering the above questions, perhaps this one should be asked of the interviewers and not the candidates.
- Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are (Reportedly from Capital One)
Image credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
