Dingbats indeed. The font is called Wingdings. 
I was asked whether I was wearing an Escher tie because I liked his art. I answered that I was, and the rest of the interview was spend discussing Escher, his art, and optical illusions.
I got the job (articling position, lawyering).
My friend had possibly the oddest interview experience of anyone, anywhere. He also had an articling interview. The interviewer noted he was Scottish in ancestry, and asked him “have you ever wielded a Claymore?”
He answered that he had not; on which, the interviewer opened a closet in his office, which was equipped with racks of various swords - Japanese Katanas, Medieval broadswords, etc. - and pulled out a Scottish Claymore, and handed it to him.
My friend hesitantly waved it about, noting it was razor-sharp. The interviewer angrily interrupted him. “That’s not how a true Scotsman wields a Claymore!” He took the sword back, and started swinging it wildly - cutting at his desk and filing cabinet, chopping splinters out of both, working himself into a frenzy: “You do it like this! And this! And this!”
Eventually he calmed down, put the sword back in the closet, and frostily announced that the interview was over.
He didn’t get the job.
Ever after, I’ve teased him that he was “No True Scotsman”. 
In the same interview:
“What was the last book you read?”, dangerous because it could get into prohibited territory, and “Do you prefer chess or poker, and why?” I answered that I preferred to play poker because of the ambiguity involved. Chess, played perfectly, always results in at least a draw. Poker, played perfectly, can still be lost because of the element of chance. I prefer an environment of ambiguity as opposed to rigid strategy. I got the job.
A year or so later I asked the chess vs. poker questioner how he came up with that question and what answer he was looking for. He said “I really don’t know, it just seemed like a good question to ask at the time”. :smack:
One that several people I know got (different details) and which surprised them but which actually seems to be pretty good involved asking them to do something that they weren’t expected to know how to do. The idea was to see how they went about it. One of them got the job on account of being the only candidate who’d tried; another, for being able to admit which parts he did not know.
I also got a job for being able to say I didn’t know a certain technique. The question didn’t seem particularly strange, coming in the wake of a string of questions about other techniques, but it turns out that specific one didn’t exist: the hiring manager used it to weed out the liars (that is, the previous 31 candidates :smack:).
The one that surprised me most at the time, but in retrospect it made perfect sense.
Cellphone rings
Hello?
Good morning, I’m trying to contact Nava?
It’s me, how may I help you?
Oh great, it’s about a job, but the first question, would you like to go to Costa Rica?
Yep, when the job is abroad it’s a good policy to begin by stating the location. A lot of the agents who contact me don’t! And no, the rest of the conversation didn’t all end in question marks 
Not really part of the interview, but my brother once had one in Pamplona during Sanfermines. Professional dress be damned, he went in his red’n’whites. The suited-up interviewer said “oh, I see, you’re professionally in Pamplona in Sanfermines” while opening his desk draawer to show the red’n’whites he’d stashed there. He got the job.
I’m rarely tempted to post at the same time in two threads, just to make them come up next to each other, but right now, one thread away, is “Have You Ever Been Mistaken For A Prostitute?”
Wingdings are a particular collection of dingbats (ornamental characters). There’s also Zapf Dingbats, for instance. And Webdings.Doesn’t really work as a humorous response, though.
Although not technically a question, this odd one sticks in my memory:
Describe the inside of a ping pong ball.
I’m a talker and pretty quick on my feet, so I gave them a good two minutes on the topic and was able to keep going until I was stopped. And yes, I got the job.
I never understood what they were assessing with this item - and I do interviews for a living. Had I been applying for a job as a writer, a speaker, or a creative person of some type, it would have made sense.
One time an interviewer had actually read my novel and asked me a question about some of the characters. I must have answered well, since they called me back for a second interview (I declined; the salary was too low for me to uproot myself and move to another part of the state).
“Tell us how you use your workplace to bring people closer to Jesus?”
This was many years ago when I applied for a job at a group home for children. I kind of hemmed and hawed and said something to the effect of “I believe in the Golden Rule, which is not unique to Christianity, but… uh… to be honest I don’t evangelize or proselytize and I’m not a member of any organized religion”.
Turns out that was actually the correct answer: it was a trick question. She’d had problems with people getting hired and then taking it upon themselves to “save” the kids.
I was offered the job- turned it down.
I had an interview where the guy asked me an old riddle, too… And I was completely unprepared for it and probably said something moronic. He told me it wasn’t necessary to get the answer right, but he wanted to “watch my process.” In my opinion, totally irrelevant for the job I was applying for (desk jockey, whereby no one would ever care to see your “process.”)
Needless to say, I didn’t get the job but I’m sure I didn’t miss much.
“How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” has been the topic of project management training – having to break something down into every little step in order.
This is a real concern in today’s workplace with so many baby boomers aging out of the workforce and taking decades of experiential knowledge out the door with them. Companies want to bring in people who can effectively train others, and bring even very basic knowledge down to it’s tiniest component parts, to match the knowledge level of the trainee.
There certainly is a font called Zapf dingbats, designed by the recently deceased Hermann Zapf: http://www.fonts.com/font/adobe/itc-zapf-dingbats/regular
“Do you have a car?”
It wasn’t a job that would have required any driving. He just wanted to know because his son was getting to driving age and he just had cars on the mind.
Eh, it may depend on the field, but it’s not necessarily a stupid question – how someone identifies as a person can tell you a lot about them. For example, I would answer that question with “Artist.” Which should tell you at least a little something about my fit for a design job.
It wasn’t a mistake 
Not a weird interview question in general, but in my case it came out of left field. While interviewing for my current position as a mortgage processor, I was asked to describe the most creative way I’ve ever solved a problem. This is a job with hard and fast rules, absolutely zero latitude, and the most in-the-box thinking I’ve ever encountered in a workplace. The borrower either has every document we need to process their loan, or they don’t. If there’s a document we need and don’t have, we request it (nicely, politely, professionally, but *never *creatively). 90% of my customer interactions consist of explaining what we need, why we need it, and yes federal fair lending regs DO apply to you, Mr. 50-Commercial-Accounts-With-Our-Bank. The other 10% consist of explaining how and why the document submitted isn’t what I requested, and could you please try again?
There’s plenty of room for interpretation from underwriting’s perspective, sure, but underwriters we are not.
Interviewer: What’s your degree in?
Me: Computer Science.
Interviewer: Computer Science is for pussies. Are you a pussy? If you’re a pussy tell me now so I don’t waste my time.
I don’t remember how I replied but I got the job so I must have managed to convince him that I’m not a pussy.
Good god, why would you accept? What was working for that interviewer like?
I don’t know, the current sequence is
“Strangest questions you’ve ever been asked in an interview.”
“What would Dubai look like today without the 2008 economic collapse?”
That one would certainly throw me off in an interview. 