The job market in America is brutal right now, with one of the highest unemployment rates in recent decades and a nose-diving economy. Even over-achieving suck-ups are having to compete for jobs and, for the first time in their professional lives, struggle to be noticed.
Hiring companies have also been affected by the “Great Recession” and are as determined as ever to squeeze as much dedication, creativity, and talent out of every employee salary they can. As a result, companies have started asking questions in interviews that are so far out of left field, we wonder if they held special “how do we intimidate the candidate” brainstorming sessions.
Here are a few of the craziest interview questions asked these days, how to answer them, as well as the types of questions companies aren’t allowed to ask.
Say what?
Online job community Glassdoor.com compiled a list of crazy questions actually asked in interviews by companies like Facebook, Pottery Barn, and Capital One. The Huffington Post came up with another, equally nutty, list. These questions go well beyond old-school interview weirdness such as the classic, “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” Here’s a sampling of the crazy:
- Capital One: Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are.
- Goldman Sachs: If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?
- Gryphon Scientific: How many cocktail umbrellas are there in a given time in the United States?
- Diageo North America: If you walk into a liquor store to count the unsold bottles, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do?
- Proctor & Gamble: Sell me an invisible pen.
- Citigroup: What is your strategy at table tennis?
- Facebook: Twenty-five racehorses, no stopwatch, five tracks. Figure out the top three fastest horses in the fewest number of races.
- Guardsmark: What do wood and alcohol have in common?
- Google: You are climbing a staircase. Each time you can either take one step or two. The staircase has n steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb the staircase?
Answer key
Actually, there aren’t really right or wrong answers to most of these, which is part of what makes them so heart-poundingly difficult. Employers are trying to see how job candidates reason through problems and deal with being put on the spot. The experts tell us that, when answering oddball questions, you should slow down, take a breath, and then actually talk through your reasoning process as you come up with your answer. This helps the interviewer understand the way you think and problem-solve, which is what he or she really wants to know.
Don’t answer that
You may find whackadoo questions to be irrelevant, a waste of your time, and indicative of a company you don’t really want to work for, but the questions above are all perfectly within an interviewer’s right to ask. Certain questions, though, should raise a red flag. When job-hunting, it’s important to know what kind of information you are legally allowed not to provide.
Included in the types of questions employers are not allowed to ask are nationality, age or date of birth, relationship or marital status, parenting status, anything involving your gender, political affiliation, religion, anything about your health or medications, and financial status. If it has to do with your personal life, affiliations, opinions, race, or background beyond education and job experience, they cannot legally ask you about it.
It’s difficult when interviewing not to answer these types of questions anyway—or give up the same information when asked open-ended questions like “tell me about yourself”—especially when you desperately need the job. But it’s better to respond with something like, “I haven’t been asked that before. What’s the reasoning behind that question?”
In addition, certain areas can be fuzzy. For example, employers cannot ask if you have been arrested, but are allowed to ask if you have ever been convicted of a crime. A rule of thumb is that, if personal information isn’t a matter of public record, they can’t ask. Your best bet is to be well acquainted with the dos and don’ts of interview questions so you know what is kosher during an interview. And don’t forget to have a few good questions of your own.
