What’s the hardest/weirdest question you’ve been asked at an interview?

[Peter Watson]

I’ve been to a lot of interviews in my time and I have to say that I haven’t really been asked anything all THAT outrageous (although in one selection, some of you will already know that I had a gun pointing at my head)! However, I have prepped sooooo many people for interviews in the past as a headhunter and heard a lot of interesting/bizarre things. Here are a few:
How many ping-pong balls can you fit into an aeroplane?
Why are manholes round?
If you were an animal, what would you be and why?

[Xenia Baranova]

I haven’t come across questions that are as weird as the ones you’ve listed but I found this one difficult in the past:

Why are you confident in your abilities?

[Andrew Spencer]

My most bizarre experience was the interviewer holding up various DIY tools and asking me how they worked. Needless to say, my interview preparation did not involve thinking about “how would you describe a wrench to someone who has never seen one before?” but it was an interesting exercise.

The hardest questions I received were:

“You say in your application you have high standards. Doesn’t that mean you will also have unrealistically high expectations of your teammates or become frustrated if you don’t think they are working to the same standards?”

“You mentioned that to manage client expectations it’s best to ‘under-promise and over-deliver’. I hear this a lot, but doesn’t this mean that you are essentially being dishonest to the client about their chances of success? Couldn’t giving a client a negative view of the case prevent them from pursuing a genuine chance of success?”

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Andrew Spencer. Reason: spelling

[Peter Watson]

Well, Xenia – I guess this is just a different way of asking you “what are your strengths”? There are lots of ways for interviewers to try and ask this questions e.g. “how would your friends describe you?”, “how would co-workers describe you?” etc. This is just one of them! If you don’t understand your own strengths and weaknesses then it’s going to be a lot harder for you to convince someone else! It’s definitely worth you spending time to understand both and – crucially – HOW THEY RELATE TO THE WORKPLACE!

[Peter Watson]

Hello Andrew – for the first question, the interviewer is probably trying to a) see whether you doubt yourself, b) put you on the spot by relating what you’ve said to the effect it might have on other people (a sign of maturity/emotional intelligence) and/or c) force you to defend yourself.

In the second question, again the interviewer is trying to get you to defend your position to make sure you have robust reasons for saying what you do. You could talk about making sure that expectations are set at a realistic level because you want to “delight” your client rather than “disappoint” them. If you were feeling particularly confident (and this is risky) you could throw the observation back to the interviewer and say that you prefer to concentrate on the “over-deliver” part of that phrase than the “under-promise” part because you always strive for excellence 😜

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