Answering
the Unanswerable: Wacky Job Interview Questions
By Francesca Di Meglio, BusnessWeek, January 14, 2013 .
Career experts tend to wax philosophical
about what business school students should be doing to win over interviewers.
Rarely does anyone ever turn the tables and focus on the outrageousness
of those making hiring decisions—until now. Glassdoor, the online
community for job hunting and recruiting, scoured thousands of questions
shared by job candidates last year to come up with the “Top 25
Oddball Interview Questions,” which was released on Monday.
Ranging from the somewhat expected (“How
would you rate your memory?”) to downright zany (“A penguin
walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say
and why is he here?”), the complete list is worth checking out,
for chuckles if nothing else. Still, if one supervisor asked such a
question, others might be doing the same. So how would you respond?
Here, an MBA administrator and students try their hand:
No. 5: What songs
best describe your work ethic?
Asked: Interview for a consumer sales
position at Dell (DELL)
Answered: Brad Aspel, director of MBA
career education and advising at Columbia Business School’s Career
Management Center, who asked a group of students how they would answer
the question
“The Marine Corps Hymn, I Like It,
I Love It (Tim McGraw), Girl on Fire (Alicia Keys), and Harder, Better,
Faster, Stronger (Kanye West), which was the most popular, were among
the answers my students gave. The trick is to think quickly in the moment
but realize the company also wants to see your creativity and even your
sense of fun. So, even if you answer Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,
there should be a sense of fun in the way you answer, so you don’t
come off trying too hard by driving the point that you are incredibly
dedicated to never stop working until everything is perfect. They want
to know you’d be an interesting person to have around, and that
merely by asking this question there is a sense of creativity and fun
in their culture.”
No. 14: My wife
and I are going on a vacation, where would you recommend?
Asked: Interview for an advisory associate
position at PricewaterhouseCoopers
Answered: Stephanie Dozier, MBA Class
of 2013, Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management
“I would recommend a trip to San
Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s a lovely, tropical area, and has a number
of different activities that would interest both you and your wife.
You can have a romantic dinner at the restaurant where the pina colada
was invented, tour the historic city wall and fort, go shopping in Old
San Juan, tour the Bacardi factory, or, for something more adventurous,
you could take a rain forest tour and go zip-lining. The number of different
activities all available in a relatively small area ensure that you’ll
both have an enjoyable and memorable vacation.”
Answered: Shannon Lindgren, Owen MBA Class
of 2013
“New Orleans because it is domestic
yet exotic. The architecture, food, music, and people would all provide
a draw individually, but together they make this city a fantastic destination
for people of all ages and interests. Bonus: supporting an economy still
recovering from Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”
No. 16: Estimate
how many windows are in New York.
Asked: Interview for an associate consultant
position at Bain & Co.
Answered: Taylor Burroughs, MBA Class
of 2013, University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business
“To estimate the number of windows
in New York, I would first clarify if this was in relation to Manhattan,
Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs, or the entire state. Assuming
we were dealing exclusively with Manhattan, I recall the size of the
island is about 200 blocks north-south by 10 avenues east-west. These
avenues are longer than blocks; the ratio is maybe 4:1. At 200 blocks
by 10 avenues, that gives us 2,000 square blocks. Including skyscrapers
and walk-ups, perhaps, the average height of a building is 10 stories.
“I’ll further estimate 25 windows
per floor each north-south block and thus 100 windows on an east-west
avenue. The total perimeter of windows is thus 250 windows per floor
per block. Given an average height of 10 stories, I calculate 2,500
windows per block. Multiplying by our 2,000 square blocks gives us 5
million windows. We’ll need to subtract for Central Park (which
seemed sufficiently large enough when I tried to run around it). A discount
of 500,000 windows seems fair given the park’s size in relation
to the total island. Thus my final estimate is 4.5 million windows.”
Complete List of Wacky
Questions
1. "If you were to get rid of
one state in the US, which would it be and why?" Asked at Forrester.
2. "How many cows are in Canada?"
Asked at Google.
3. "How many quarters would you
need to reach the height of the Empire State building?" Asked
at JetBlue.
4. "A penguin walks through that
door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?"
Asked at Clark Construction Group.
5. "What songs best describes
your work ethic?" Asked at Dell.
6. "Jeff Bezos walks into your
office and says you can have a million dollars to launch your best entrepreneurial
idea. What is it?" Asked at Amazon.
7. "What do you think about when
you are alone in your car?" Asked at Gallup.
8. "How would you rate your memory?"
Asked at Marriott.
9. "Name 3 previous Nobel Prize
Winners." Asked at BenefitsCONNECT.
10. "Can you say: 'Peter Pepper
Picked a Pickled Pepper' and cross-sell a washing machine at the same
time?" Asked at MasterCard.
11. "If we came to your house
for dinner, what would you prepare for us?" Asked at Trader
Joe's.
12. "How would people communicate
in a perfect world?" Asked at Novell.
13. "How do you make a tuna sandwich?"
Asked at Astron Consulting.
14. "My wife and I are going on
vacation, where would you recommend?" Asked at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
15. "You are a head chef at a
restaurant and your team has been selected to be on Iron Chef. How do
you prepare your team for the competition and how do you leverage the
competition for your restaurant?" Asked at Accenture.
16. "Estimate how many windows
are in New York." Asked at Bain & Company.
17. "What's your favorite song?
Perform it for us now." Asked at LivingSocial.
18. "Calculate the angle of two
clock pointers when time is 11:50." Asked at Bank of America.
19. "Have you ever stolen a pen
from work?" Asked at Jiffy Software.
20. "Pick two celebrities to be
your parents." Asked at Urban Outfitters.
21. "What kitchen utensil would
you be?" Asked at Bandwidth.com.
22. "If you had turned you cell
phone to silent, and it rang really loudly despite it being on silent,
what would you tell me?" Asked at Kimberly-Clark.
23. "On a scale from one to ten,
rate me as an interviewer." Asked at Kraft Food.
24. "If you could be anyone else,
who would it be?" Asked at Salesforce.com.
25. "How would you direct someone
else on how to cook an omelet?" Asked at PETCO.
