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“Verity - the quality or state of being true or real; Balderdash –
nonsense.”
Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Weird Job Interview
Questions
Verities & Balderdash
By Bob Robinson
A Dayton Business Journal article should technically be a news report,
but it’s just too good not to share in today’s V&B.
The weirdest job interview questions of the year — and the companies
that asked them — were released by California-based Glassdoor.com, an
online career and jobs community that offers insights on companies and
workplaces.
Included in the list are several companies with operations in the
Dayton area, including Deloitte, AT&T (NYSE: T) and US Bancorp
(NYSE: USB). Questions were shared by job candidates during the past
year.
1) “If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender,
how would you get out?” — Asked for an analyst position at Goldman
Sachs (NYSE: GS).
2) “How many ridges [are there] around a quarter?” — Asked for a
project analyst position at Deloitte.
3) “What is the philosophy of martial arts?” — Asked for a sales
associate position at Aflac (NYSE: AFL).
4) “Explain [to] me what has happened in this country during the last
10 years.” — Asked for a consultant position at Boston Consulting.
5) “Rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are.” — Asked for an
operations analyst position at Capital One (NYSE: COF).
6) “How many basketball[s] can you fit in this room?” — Asked for a
people analyst position at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG).
7) “Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest 3 horses. In each race, only 5
horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races
required?” — Asked for a software developer position at Bloomberg LP
Financial.
8) “If you could be any superhero, who would it be?” — Asked for a
customer sales position at AT&T (NYSE: T).
9) “You have a birthday cake and have exactly 3 slices to cut it into 8
equal pieces. How do you do it?” — Asked for a fixed income analyst
position at Blackrock Portfolio Management Group (NYSE: BLK).
10) “Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum numbers guesses
needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint ‘higher’ or
‘lower’ for each guess you make?” — Asked for a software engineer
position at Facebook.
11) “If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games
would need to be played to determine the winner?” — Asked for a manager
position at Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN).
12) “An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a
grapefruit costs 60 cents, how much is a pear?”— Asked for a project
manager position at Epic Systems.
13) “There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only
oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been
incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents
of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the
box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can
you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?” — Asked for a
software QA engineer position at Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL).
14) “How many traffic lights in Manhattan?” — Asked for an analyst
position at Argus Information & Advisory Services.
15) “You are in a dark room with no light. You need matching socks for
your interview and you have 19 gray socks and 25 black socks. What are
the chances you will get a matching pair?” — Asked for a quality
assurance position at Eze Castle.
16) “What do wood and alcohol have in common?” — Asked for a staff
writer position at Guardsmark.
17) “How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?” —
Asked for a software engineer at International Business Machines (NYSE:
IBM).
18) “You have 8 pennies, 7 weigh the same, one weighs less. You also
have a judges scale. Find the one that weighs less in less than 3
steps.” — Asked for a systems validation engineer position at Intel
Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC).
19) “Why do you think only a small percentage of the population makes
over $150K?” — Asked for a sales agent position at New York Life.
20) “You are in charge of 20 people. Organize them to figure out how
many bicycles were sold in your area last year.” — Asked for a field
engineer position at Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB).
21) “How many bottles of beer are consumed in the city over the week?”
— Asked for a research analyst position at The Nielsen Co.
22) “What’s the square root of 2000?” — Asked for a sales and trading
position at UBS (NYSE: UBS).
23) “A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60 mph. Another train
leaves Houston for San Antonio at 80 mph. Houston and San Antonio are
300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100 mph, and turns
around and flies back once it reaches the Houston train, and continues
to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide?”
— Asked for a software engineer position at USAA.
24) “How are M&M’s made?” — Asked for a program development
position at US Bank (NYSE: USB).
25) “What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your
uncle?” — Asked for a business analyst position at Volkswagen.
Here’s the link if you’re interested…
Dayton Business Journal
You read about Beth Royer’s experiences… want to share yours?
Remember, verities should be thought provoking; balderdash is nonsense.
See you next time.
Bob Robinson is the
retired editor of The Daily Advocate, Greenville, Ohio. If you wish to
receive a daily notification comments, opinions and reports from County
News Online, send your email address to: countynewsonline@gmail.com.
Feel free to express your views.
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