Being prepared for the questions you might be asked in an interview is one of the keys to successfully navigating them. But sometimes interviewers can ask some really weird questions. The Austin Business Journall recently compiled a list of the top 25 oddest job interview questions of 2010.
Here are some of the bizarre questions that were asked during last year:
- If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?
- How many ridges are there around a quarter?
- What is the philosophy of martial arts?
- Explain to me what has happened to this country during the last ten years.
- Rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are.
- How many basketballs can you fit in this room?
- 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?
- If you could be any superhero, who would it be and why?
- You have a birthday cake and have exactly 3 slices to cut into 8 equal pieces. How do you do it?
- Given the numbers 1 to 1,000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number, if you are given the hint "higher" or "lower" for each guess you make?
- If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played in order to determine the winner?
- An apple costs $.20, an orange costs $.40, and a grapefruit cost $.60 cents. How much is a pear?
- There are 3 boxes, 1 contains only apples, 1 contains only oranges, 1 contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled so that no label identifies the actual contents of the box. Opening just one box, and without looking inside, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all the boxes correctly?
- How many traffic lights are in Manhattan?
- You are in a dark room with no light. You need matching socks for an interview and you have 19 grey socks and 25 black socks. What are the chances you will get a matching pair?
- What do wood and alcohol have in common?
- How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?
- You have 8 pennies, 7 weigh the same, 1 weighs less. You also have a judge's scale. Find the one that weighs less, in less than three steps.
- Why do you think only a small percentage of the population makes over $150k?
- You are in charge of 20 people. Organize them to figure out how many bicycles were sold in your area last year.
- How many bottles of beer are drunk in the city over the week?
- What's the square root of 2,000?
- A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60mph. Another train leaves Houston for San Antonio at 80mph. Houston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100mph, 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?
- How are M&Ms made?
- What would you do if you just inherited a piece of restaurant from your uncle.
Some of these questions can just make your brain hurt, while others are just plain silly.
What are some of the weirdest questions you've been asked in an interview? Let me know in the comments.
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By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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