Each week I like to take time to catch up on research reading. So last night I reread Anne Fisher’s article in FORTUNE/CNN Where she talks about interviewers resorting to desperate
measures in their efforts to narrow the field of candidates. It strikes me that interviewers and company’s will experiment with interview techniques too often and without understanding what they will do with the answers. Like having too many interviews or a number of personality tests.

Silly Questions
Anyway, back to the silly questions. In most
cases the interviewers were reported to be more interested in how candidates responded, identified their thought processes and seeing if they kept their cool. Some of the questions, however, are truly bizarre!
Here’s three of my favourites:

“Using a scale of 1 to 10, rate yourself on how weird you are.” Capital One (COF)

“Explain quantum electrodynamics in two minutes, starting now.” Intel (INTC)

“How many balloons would fit in this room?”  PricewaterhouseCoopers

Candidates questions
What would the reaction be, I wonder, if the tables were turned and candidates started to do the same? With that in mind:
What would be the questions you might be tempted to ask an interviewer for a job?

I read with facination Anne Fisher’s article in Fortune magazine  The Most Ridiculous Job Interview Questions asked by some leading companies to job candidates. She does defend them on the basis that the interviewers weren’t looking for correct answers but how the candidate responded to the question. So I asked some of my network how they might answer the questions.

Interview questions mentioned in Fortune include,

“Using a scale of 1 to 10, rate yourself on how weird you are.” — Capital One (COF)

“How many bricks are there in Shanghai? Consider only residential buildings.” –Deloitte Consulting

“You have three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled so that no label accurately identifies the contents of any of the boxes. Opening just one box, and without looking inside, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?” — Apple (AAPL)

Lack of expertise to anaylse answer

Most people thought the questions silly and was another “fad” that would probably not last. The reason being is that one has to be quite expert to analyse people’s reactions to situations to deterime “norm of behaviour” and most interviewers will not have that expertise.

Candidate’s rections

I’ve asked some friends of mine what their reactions would be to being asked such questions and here are some of the answers.

a) I would assume that the interviewer was “barking” and probably be impossible to work with.

b) To the bricks question from Deloitte I’d answer “Three” and then add “Red, Grey and Brown”
but my favourite answer was:

C) Answering the “weird” question I’d say “How weird do I have to be to get the job?”