10 of the Most Oddest Questions Asked..............

Hi Guys and Dolls,

With employers having the advantage to be more and more selective with who they hire due to the record breaking number of people out of work, are they taking interview questions too far?

Here is a list of top ten questions that have been reported by job seekers:

“Tell me the restaurant where you dined last night?” – Ernst & Young consultant candidate (location n/a)

“Do you feel you had a normal childhood?” – Gentex mechanical engineer candidate (Zeeland, Mich.)

“If you can grow anything on a tree, what would it be?” – Red Frog Events event coordinator candidate (Chicago, Ill.)

“If you were in the movie 'The Wizard of Oz,' which character do you most relate with and why?” – National Contract Management Association customer service representative candidate (Ashburn, Va.)

“Would you rather be ranked No. 1 in the office and hated by everyone or No. 15 in the office but well-liked?” – ADP outside sales representative candidate (location n/a)

“If you were stranded on a deserted island, what three things would you want to have with you?” – Cisco Human Resources manager candidate (location n/a)

“Jeff Bezos walks into your office and says you can have a million dollars to launch your best entrepreneurial idea. What is it?" – Amazon product development candidate (Seattle, Wash.)

“My clock is nine minutes slow every hour. At noon, it tells the correct time. After how many hours will it again tell the correct time?” – Bloomberg L.P. financial applications engineer candidate (New York, N.Y.)

“If you had five red balls that contained four red balls and those red balls contained the original five red balls, then how many sets of sets of balls would I take to have a double set of red balls of varying sizes inside each next largest red ball?” – Goldman Sachs investment banking vice president candidate (New York, N.Y.)

source: glassdoor.com


If you were asked one of these questions in an interview would you try to intelligently answer it? I would think what any employer would seek is an honest reliable worker. It would be very difficult for me not to say "this is a joke right, and your testing my honesty here". Then again i prolly wouldn't get the job either!

Lips

These questions are absurd and useless. As an employer of 35+ years I would have no reason to ask these questions. Employees should be asked questions that are applicable to the job they are applying for.

If I was applying for a job and the employer asked me to answer these questions I would run for the hills. (but before I rans I would ask why in the world they wanted me to answer questions that would give them no insight into my experience and abilities.)

What a joke.

Those are definitely some outlandish questions but there were a couple that I could see a point to. For example, “Would you rather be ranked No. 1 in the office and hated by everyone or No. 15 in the office but well-liked? When you're good at what you do or in a management role, you're not always liked and being liked is not part of the job.

On the other hand, someone's childhood is none of their concern and I'm surprised that something like that would even be asked considering all of the Equal Opportunity Employer regulations in place in the USA. When I was interviewing anyone, if they even mentioned something like having children I had to give them the disclosure that I wouldn't take the fact that they have family into consideration for the position blah blah blah.

I think most question revolve on the job opening but some employers like to watch us squirm and throw a curve ball in there. 

I would fail completely on this one "If you were in the movie 'The Wizard of Oz,' which character do you most relate with and why".  I've never seen the film nor want to. 

Crazy questions but I guess they are designed to delve deep into your personality.

blue

Some of those questions are totally absurd and I will probably laugh my way out of the room if somebody would ask me about the Wizard of Oz at a job interview.

The one with the red balls would probably leave me speechless

a couple of the questions are straight forward math analysis,  i think some are trick questions to see if they can get you to answer like a moron, and some??  i guess maybe they wanted to know if you were an ax murderer or something when you were a kid ahahah  and the three things i would choose for being stranded on an island would probably get me eliminated lol

When I applied for a job at SC Johnson (Johnson Wax Company) I had a week full of tests and then I had interviews with my immediate supervisor and the general supervisor...quite the experience!! I'm glad I didn't have some of these questions tho cuz I would have failed big time!!

BTW..The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite movies.Freaked me out tho when I was small child!!

Maybe they want to see reactions to the stressful situations. sometimes at the workplace we don't deal with only regular, predictable things. Perhaps answers to these questions reveals them something we'd like to hide. I don't like question about a childhood, I think it's way too personal for many people.

Oh blueday, you should watch the Wizard of Oz at least once in your life! For myself, I would have to answer that I would be one of the many, many, munchkins... for you, I think the Good Witch Glinda...

As for the red balls question... when I answered that one I would be thrown out of the interview post haste!
LOL

katt

Agreed.  As a former psychologist and now a business owner, these questions make very little, to no, sense.

Yes, as a child I was horrified of Wizard of Oz!