It doesn't have to be programming or software development related, but just asked during an interview for an IT related job.
I know some "left field" questions are meant to see how the candidate copes with unexpected and novel situations, but here I'm looking for a question that appeared to be completely unrelated to the job they were interviewing you for, or something that made you think "what useful information could they possibly get from my answer to that question?".
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Do they really think people are dumb enough to say that they want to do something completely different? Or don't want to work for them?
I guess it can be useful as an indicator of who not to hire but it's so stupid easy to fake that you can't use it as an indicator of who to hire in any way if they answer correctly.
"Would you have any problems with being the only woman in a currently all-male group?"
'Cause, darn, then who would I talk with about lipstick? Or whether puce is in this year? Or any other non-work-related question I have no interest in?
Yes, I got the job.
Yes, I got stuck with things like, "We have to buy a group birthday gift for the boss, and you're a woman, so you collect money from everyone, figure out what to get him, and then go buy & wrap it."
Yes, I regretted taking the job, and was thrilled to leave.
Did they think that after 16 years of programming it would be news to me that this is a primarily male field?
"What's the method signature of [I forget] from the [some Java reflection class]?"
"Uh... do you want me to look it up?"
The guy was visibly disgusted that I didn't know. For a web applications job.
When does your visa expire?
I'm a US citizen, Chinese-American. English is my native language and the question came up after about 10 minutes of conversation.
"Can you bring us the secrets of your past employers?"
Not exactly in these words, but that's the intention.
In rapid succession:
last one really threw me for a loop.
I was once asked, "Has anything unfortunate happened to you recently?"
I responded that my father had recently died. The interviewer just nodded slowly and said "Hmmm...."
What is your worst flaw?
This question is so dated and expected that I now use it as a metric. If a company is so far behind that they ask me this, I don't want to work for them.
How many Functions are there in the Object Class ?
Compared to the other answers posted, I think this one should win by miles :-).
"What animal would you be if you could be any animal you wanted to be?"
I was 20 years old then and I chose "human", but that was an unacceptable answer. They persisted, and I started to think they were a bit loopy. A week later they offered me the job, which I later declined.
"How would you reformat this piece of code here?"
They wanted the interviewee to give an answer consistent with the company's coding standards, i.e. guess what that company's standards are.
Their style was unusual (Whitesmiths style indenting and they required a comment on every statement) so I doubt many candidates would have given the answer they wanted.
Fortunately they didn't give too much weight to that question. I scored more points by spotting all the bugs in the example function and they hired me.
I was asked the infamous rectangular cake question during a job interview:
How would you cut a rectangular cake into two equal pieces when a rectangular piece has already been cut out of it? The cut piece can be of any size and orientation. You are only allowed to make one straight cut.
This was terrible for two reasons:
Although I got a job offer from this interview, the stupidity of this question and the general zealotry of the interviewer put me off working for the company, so I guess this question was useful for me to help decide not to work there!
The worst I was ever asked was:
Why are manhole covers circular?
Aside from the fact that most aren't this completely threw me.
The answer the interview wanted?
So if you drop it over the hole it can't fall through.
This was about 20 years ago now and I still remember it.
Having been on both sides of the table on this one, the reaction to the odd and stereotypically lame questions can be more informative than the "good" ones.
The worst of that sort I was ever asked was if I would take a doughnut.
They had one on a plate on the table, but it was sitting in front of an empty chair next to the 4th coffee cup on the table (only three interviewers) giving the appearance that it was a 4th person's doughnut. The job dealt with a fair number of uncomfortable situations and they wanted to see how gracefully the interviewee could deal with it.
The one I later asked as an interviewer was to go 3rd in a team interview, and when it was my turn to ask I would put one of those aluminum briefcases that movies always show cash in on the table and ask the interviewee to name something inside. I actually carried the briefcase regularly so there was mostly normal things inside, but in dozens of interviews I only ever got two good answers: "air" which is almost impossible to be wrong, and "pencil" which we actually had to look to see because I couldn't remember (their wasn't). The point of this one was to see how quickly the person could deal with the random context change and how logically they approached the issue.
The point is that sometimes the answer itself doesn't matter in the least, the interviewer is interested in how you handle yourself or how you arrive at the answer.
"How many years of DLL do you have?
It happened during a phone interview with a recruiter. I kind of saw this question coming because the previous five or so questions were all in the form of "how many years of X do you have", for each X from the list of buzzwords exactly in the order they occurred in the job ad.
This question will not only make you think "what useful information could they possibly get from my answer to that question?", but also "what useful information could they possibly get from any of my answers?"
The job would have required an 80km (50-mile) one-way commute, so I knew at that moment I wasn't going to pursue it.
When I was near graduation in college, I had an interview with a woman who started every question like this:
Share with me your feelings about...
Share with me your thoughts on...
She was not at all technical, so all these were touchy/feely questions about odd social behaviors and situations. It was extremely awkward.
I see from your resume you've spent some time in Israel... would you have a problem working with Palestinian co-workers?
How do you feel about customers?
I answered with: "I haven't met any."
Then at the end (this question ended the interview by itself) my favorite:
From one to ten, how would you rate yourself as a person?
To which I replied: Eleven.
He then thanked me, and I left. Ten minutes out the door I was offered my current job.
Now you know why I wanted to impress the guy. =)
I was once asked by a Microsoft recruiter to solve a question which was basically the pigeon hole principal. I responded by emailing a link to the Wikipedia article.
Here are 38 more questions.
- Are you able to work overtime, evenings and weekends?
- How do you feel about attending conferences with (men) (women) ?
- What child care arrangements have you made?
- What type of position does your spouse have?
- Do you think that you can supervise (men) (women), and how do you think they will react?
- This job has always been handled by a (female) (male). Do you think you can handle it?
- Are you willing to put career interests before self-interests?
- What are your computer skills? Would you be interested in doing some word processing?
- How do you feel about women's liberation?
- By the way, would you mind telling me: "Just how old are you?"
- How do you respond to authority?
- How do you define sexual harassment?
- Where were you born?
- What's your nationality?
- Are you married, divorced, separated, or single?
- Are you living with anyone?
- What holidays do you celebrate?
- Do you have any disabilities that affect your work?
- What is your health situation like?
- Have you ever been arrested?
- Are you on any medications?
- Do you ever abuse alcohol or drugs?
- How many children do you have?
- What church do you attend?
- How do you think my older employees would react if I hired you?
- Do you have many debts?
- Do you own or rent your home?
- How much insurance do you have?
- How much do you weigh?
- Do you plan to have any more children?
- What does your spouse think about your career?
- Have you ever brought a law suit against an employer?
- Have you ever filed for workers' comp?
- Where do you usually go on vacation?
- What do you think about romance in the office?
- Have you ever been sexually harassed?
- Do you have plans to get married?
- Tell me about your family.
How much can you drink (alcohol).
It was a weird company, the boss and his son smoked so everyone worked in a smoke filled room. Luckily the found somebody else.
I was in a phone interview for a .NET job and the interviewer was aware that I am a fresh graduate with 6 months of part time ASP.NET(C#) experience.
She first asked me, "How come you don't list sharepoint on your resume?"
I respond, "Because I don't have any sharepoint experience."
She responds, "Well I thought you said you have 6 mos. of ASP.NET experience?"
I respond, "Correct, but I didn't utilize sharepoint at all."
She responds, "Well my client is asking for .NET Sharepoint experience, sorry."
End of interview.
I was once asked if i was married or single.
It can be considered a little bit off-topic, but I think it is worth to tell this story.
There was a terrible thing that happened to me.
When I was searching my first job, I was interviewed by a nice guy, at the first interview. One week after, the second interview there was his superior interviewing me, screaming like I was burning him, and me, I was shocked that the guy was screaming so much.
The next day the company phoned me for beginning to prepare myself to work for them, in a few days they would call me.
So, in a few days they called me. They said I would not be hired because the project was aborted.
I was once asked if I had any food allergies.
Are you easily offended by off-color humor?
Is there anyone who thinks they are? If I define it as humor, then I'm probably not offended, and if I'm offended, I probably didn't think it was funny or humorous. Obviously, there are things that WOULD offend me, but I have no way of knowing if what you refer to and what I refer to are the same degree of offensiveness, and no way of asking if that's what you refer to without bringing up, by definition, an offensive topic!
It occurred to me after a few seconds that they might want to just see how I react to interoffice disputes or something, but that question threw me off for a second.
I've seen some companies in Portugal, and not only from the IT area, asking "How many gas bombs there are in Portugal?" (or in some other geographically delimited area known by both employer and candidate).
There was also an HR person telling this to me, and I said that I would not answer to this question or answer that "I will not give an answer to this question".
But, she replied me, that, for this question, you only need to answer. Period.
In my opinion such kind of questions don't add anything scientifically verifiable, nor do represent a person's ability to solve a problem.
How come you haven't learned OOP? Don't you believe in upgrading your skill set?
I was so pissed off. I have forgotten more about writing code than that snot nose will ever learn.
