Top 25 'oddball' job interview questions from 2011

 

By Jack Lambert – Researcher/Reporter – Baltimore Business Journal
 

Interviewing for a job can be very stressful. Some of the questions can really make you sweat as you try and find the right things to say.

Others, not so much.

Glassdoor.com, a jobs and career website, recently released its top-25 "oddball questions" from interviewers in 2011. The company picked through more than 150,000 interview questions to come up with some of the wackiest things job candidates were asked in 2011.

Here is the list:

1. "How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2:30pm on a Friday?" – asked at Google, vendor relations manager candidate

2. "Just entertain me for five minutes, I'm not going to talk." – asked at Acosta, leadership development program associate candidate.

3. "If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?" – asked at Hewlett-Packard, product marketing manager candidate

4. "What do you think of garden gnomes?" – asked at Trader Joe's, team member candidate

5. "Is your college GPA reflective of your potential?" – asked at the Advisory Board, strategic marketing associate candidate

6. "Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?" – asked at Deloitte, analyst candidate

7. "If you could be number one employee but have all your coworkers dislike you or you could be number 15 employee and have all your coworkers like you, which would you choose?" – asked at ADP, inside sales associate candidate

8. "How would you cure world hunger?" – asked at Amazon.com, software developer candidate

9. "Room, desk and car – which do you clean first?" – asked at Pinkberry, shift lead candidate

10. "Does life fascinate you?" – asked at Ernst & Young, tax analyst candidate

11. "Given 20 'destructible' light bulbs (which breaks at certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how do you determine the height that the light bulb breaks?" – asked at QUALCOMM, engineering candidate

12. "Please spell 'diverticulitis'." – asked at EMSI Engineering, account manager candidate

13. "Name 5 uses of a stapler without staple pins." – asked at EvaluServe, business analyst candidate

14. "How much money did residents of Dallas/Ft. Worth spend on gasoline in 2008?" – asked at American Airlines, revenue management candidate

15. "How would you get an elephant into a refrigerator?" – asked at Horizon Group Properties, office assistant candidate

16. "You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?" – asked at Epic Systems, corp. project manager/implementation consultant candidate

17. "How many planes are currently flying over Kansas?" – asked at Best Buy, demand planning analyst candidate

18. "How many different ways can you get water from a lake at the foot of a mountain, up to the top of the mountain?" – asked at Disney Parks and Resorts, project engineering intern candidate

19. "What is 37 times 37?" – asked at Jane Street Capital, assistant trader candidate

20. "If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess?" – asked at Rain and Hail Insurance, claim auditor candidate

21. "If you were a Microsoft Office program, which one would you be?" – asked at Summit Racing Equipment, ecommerce candidate

22. "Pepsi or Coke?" – asked at United Health Group, associate project manager candidate

23. "Are you exhaling warm air?" – Asked at Walker Marketing, client manager candidate

24. "You're in a row boat, which is in a large tank filled with water. You have an anchor on board, which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank). Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?" – asked at Tesla Motors, mechanical engineer candidate

25. "How do you feel about those jokers at Congress?" – asked at Consolidated Electrical, management trainee candidate

Lambert, Jack. "Top 25 'oddball' Job Interview Questions from 2011 – Baltimore Business Journal." Business News – The Business Journals. 27 Dec. 2011. Web. 05 Jan. 2012. <http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/blog/2011/12/top-25-oddball-job-interview.html?ana=lnk>.

 

Published On: January 5th, 2012Categories: Blog News, Job Search and Career

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