In a recent job interview, I was asked these questions:
Q1: What is your favorite sandwich that you can make yourself?
Q2: Could you explain to us how to make it?
What are the strangest interview questions you’ve ever been asked?
“What noun best describes you?” It didn’t strike me so much as strange, as it did for its stupidity. I even had to repeat “Noun?” to make sure she didn’t mean adjective or adverb, which would actually make sense. “Yes” she says, with a stupid smirk on her face.
“Mammal”, I replied.
I didn’t get the job.
I actually like the sandwich question.
I got hit with a very stupid hypothetical question about inheriting an elephant from a distant uncle and what I would do with it. :rolleyes: It was one of those “gang interviews” with three pretentious hipster asspipes.
I think right then I decided I didn’t want the fucking job.
Which one of your parents is the alcoholic?
He told me he could tell by the way I answered questions that at least one of my parents is an alcoholic, gave me some information on ACOA, and the interview was over.
Computer programming job, I didn’t get it.
I had a phone interview once where we were talking about my management experience and the interviewer asked me what out-of-the-box tools I had used to manage teams.
I didn’t understand the question. “Out of the box? Like purchased, unmodified solutions?” I was thinking he meant ‘out of the box’ as in new, off-the-shelf tools. You know, you take something out of the box and use it, right?
“No, no, out of the box - you know, ideas that were unusual or something no one had tried before.” :smack: He meant what is usually called “outside the box.” If he had said “outside the box” I would have known what he meant.
But I didn’t get the job, presumably because I didn’t know what “out of the box” meant.
I’d get “test” questions sometimes. I hated them, really pointless. And somewhat to completely out of left field.
E.g., a wire labeling problem. A generalized version of problem 4 here. n wires instead of 120 and number of trips instead of distance.
My answer:
[spoiler]“Obviously it could be done in log n steps, but you’re looking for a constant step solution, aren’t you?”
That was good enough and the interviewer moved on.
(Good thing the issue of just 2 wires didn’t come up.)
Later on I figured out how to do it in a very small constant number of steps.[/spoiler]
Another was “Searching online how would you find out how much water flows past New Orleans everyday on average?”
I tossed a series of methods from the obvious to nitty gritty as each one was given a “And if you couldn’t do that?” response.
It wasn’t really a Fermi Problem as I wasn’t expected to give the answer, just how to find it.
But the oddest: “How many meanings of the word “cant” can you think of?” Gave an acceptable list, I think, but wtf?
None of the positions remotely related to these questions, of course.
Applying for a summer teaching job, I was asked if I would be having romantic relationships with my (underage) students.
They didn’t ask outright at first. They sort of hinted around with vague questions about roles. It took me a moment to see what they were getting at, and when I did I was kind of shocked. I was a certified professional with experience and a master’s degree - I’m thinking this either shouldn’t be asked because it’s absurd, or if I was a predator I’d have a lie prepared. I mean, did they really expect to catch someone by just asking, “Are you going to molest the students?”
So I played dumb until they asked explicitly, at which point I paused and said, “I hope you take my failure to understand that line of questioning at first as evidence that I would never dream of such a thing. Of course not.”
Didn’t get an offer.
On an application:
Salary expected?
Since it had a question mark, I replied: Yes
I got the job. Got paid, too
“What are your career goals?”
I was already retired, in my 60s, applying for a weekend fill-in job.
I think I said “To die in my sleep”. I got the job.
Hmm.
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“How would you deal with a manager who is verbally abusive and yells at you?” No. No red flags there at all. They apparently didn’t like my answer. Which was fine. I don’t like to be yelled at.
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“How would you tell which racehorse was slowest, between 2 horses in a match race?” Really?! This has what to do with product marketing? The answer they “wanted” was not really the only answer, so I explained what was wrong with their paradigm and suggested that they use a different example next time, with details. I guess they did like that answer, since I got that job. Stupid me, i took it.
Weirdest:
In 1997 I was a social worker with 4 years’ experience and an MSW as well as a personal history having been diagnosed with a psychiatric condition and a subsequent history of activism in the patient’s rights movement. I go to interview for a social work job on Staten Island with an advocacy and empowerment org that does group organizing and communal household operational support for former mental patients, which in turn is roughly what I’d done in my social work internship back in school.
So I go in to the interview, they ask me what there is about the job that I find appealing. (Lots of stuff, indeed, aside from the usual bit about gee it would be nice to have a regular paycheck and I need a job etc). The rest of the interview goes kind of like this:
Interviewer: So…tell me what you are looking for.
Me: Well, ideally…I’d like to work with a population that is in one social position, but wishes to move to another, to address the situation in which they find themselves…especially if there are some ‘unfair’ aspects to their current situation or to the availability of easily accessible pathways leading them to where they want to go. I see my role as a facilitator, a ‘cutter of red tape’…I make a profession of learning and knowing how to make that transition, and advise them accordingly and counsel them and participate in programmatic activity design and implementation all designed around the theme of helping them make that transition.
Interviewer: Well, what you will be doing here is…FIXING LUNCH.
Me: [long silence]. …fixing lunch?
Interviewer: Fixing lunch. It’s a day program and there’s a kitchen and clients drop in for activities and lunch, and that would be your responsibility: FIXING LUNCH.
Me: [another long, not particularly coherent silence]…Um…OK, there’s a reason you advertised for a social worker and not a sous chef, I presume.
Interviewer: We don’t need a chef. There are some clients who would gladly take over the whole process and fix for everyone every day, and we have to tell them ‘Let the others take a crack at it’. Perhaps you can motivate the clients who are your charges at the moment. Some we never get to the point that they will attempt anything but hot dogs. And if you are not able to accomplish the necessary motivation, or the clients who are available do not seem to be up to the task, you FIX LUNCH.
Me: Ahhh! So the attainment of lunch-preparation is my responsibility…ideally, of course, you hope that I am able to lead, organize, motivate the clients…encourage them
Interviewer [interrupting]: But you need to be able to FIX LUNCH. Is that a problem? Can you do that?
Me: I don’t think the average 4-star restaurant would hire me to cook for them, but I can cook. Vegetarian, mainstream, different cuisines…I am getting better at cooking multiple courses and having them come up at the same time… uh, I…assume that…I would be somehow responsible for the shopping? Keeping track of the supplies?
Interviewer: Oh well yes, of course, with an annual budget…
:mad: :mad:
First question: Do you smoke?
That was the decider. I got the job.
In 1995, in Columbus OH, for a software engineer position. In a peer interview, one-on-one, another SW engineer asked me this off-the-wall question, “If you were to meet Bill Gates, would you punch him in the face or would you shake his hand?” After just a moment I replied with, “Well, I wouldn’t punch him in the face.”
What comes next in this sequence? O T T F F S S
Apparently that job required an encyclopedic knowledge of old riddles.
A friend of mine had an interview that was the Voight-Kampff from blade runner. 3 Questions in and he said “Are you trying to find out if I’m a replicant?”
He got the job.
“Why did you flunk freshman Economics?”
That was at an interview for a position as a librarian that had absolutely jack to do with freshman economics and was almost 20 years after I failed the course.
I said “I had personal problems at the time”. That was one of the greatest understatement I have ever made. In fact the specific reason I failed the course was because what day of the final I was extremely concerned that my mother was about to poison my great aunt, and I wasn’t sure whose side I was on the matter, or whose side the great aunt would be on, or if I should tell somebody. That is the very shortest possible Version.
Same interview she asked me why I wear a gold ankh ring. I told her the reason: it was a gift and I like it. (Still wear it.)
Weirder still is that when she called my references, she asked them the same thing!
I got offered the job, it was my first job as a librarian, and I only kept it for three months before taking the first position to come open to get me the hell out of there. Woman was crazy.
Fail. The correct answer would have been: " Is this testing whether I’m a Replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?"
“If you were a font, what would you be?”
“Dingbats.”
Got the job.
I didn’t say he got it right, I just said he got the job.
WTF? I don’t think there’s a law that covers this level of asshattery but there should be.