Number 8 - The Elevator Speech. I have often used it to make a pitch for the non-profit where I worked. One has 20 - 30 seconds at the most to accomplish a lot. You must be succinct.

I used to ask some (not all) potential volunteers, "name three people, living or dead, real or not, who you would enjoy have dinner with." Always surprising responses, but those responses told me a lot about the potential volunteer.

Those are good questions. Requiring a bit of thought yet answerable.

I don't know, Socks . . . at least one (No. 7) is answerable with a Yes or No. :-)

Somehow I don't think I'd get these jobs. For No. 4, for instance, I'd be tempted to reply, "Why would I want to?" And I've never seen Game of Thrones.

But I'm a good shuffler!

Yes, #8 is the Elevator Speech, as Jim said. Quite common - whether asked in an interview or not. Everyone (job searcher) should have an elevator speech which simply means that, in 30 seconds, you tell the interviewer what they need to know in order to hire you or continue the interview.

With respect to the other questions, I agree that some are ridiculous. But they are asked not for the actual answers, but to see how one goes about formulating an answer.

Only questions 4 and 10 seem that they would be at all relevant to the skills required for the job that was the subject of the respective interview. The others questions IMHO are vacuous and/or inane, and would elicit from me either a response of "What's the point of that question?" or simply walking out of the interview. (which I have done in the past.)

I understand that for the other questions the job they are interviewing for is largely a "people-person" job and the question is intended to divine elements of the interviewee's personality and their suitability for the job. I suppose that since I would not be suitable for such a job, my likely response would indicate that, and therefore the questions would have to be considered successful in that case.

Feel like a plastic bag??? Ummm no! I feel like a human being. Nothing plastic about me. That's the only response I would be willing to give to that stupid question. I too have not been involved in any way with game of thrones, no response. Number 4 doesn't deserve a response it deserves a LOOK.

I admit to being a bit of a control freak, so the first thought I had about the elevator question--I'd reach out, push an imaginary button, and say to the interviewer, "You're not going anywhere until you listen to me."

I probably wouldn't get the job.

Actually #4 is about the only question that makes sense given that it's for an actuarial position.

I've never seen Game of Thrones and on a long-haul flight I want to be sitting beside my husband.

The use of off the wall questions kind of grew and then tumbled in Silicon Valley starting 15 years ago or more. Google was known to be particularly interested in presenting job applicants with unexpected questions and mental tasks. I think it was a way to screen engineers and avoid those who were too rigid or one-dimensional in their thinking. Too frequently these limiting personality types are present in engineers and employers want to avoid having people like this, especially for the kind of unstructured projects Google is known for.

I can't imagine any usefulness at all with the lower level job types mentioned above.

I missed out on a job when I was young because I'd been living out of the country and was asked about a character on a long running TV show. I didn't realize that he'd changed massively in the seasons I'd missed. I should have said, I don't know. That show doesn't play where I've been living, rather than going on the several previous seasons I'd seen.

I wonder if some of these questions are meant to provoke "right" answers. Like for #1, do you appreciate the honest and crude guy who says "big t*tt**s"? Or is the right answer, Your Company, Your Competition and Yourself? The right answer to #3 is the guy with the big contract who thinks the firm is too small, so you have a full flight to bond and smooze and turn him around. For #5, the right answer is something that shows your bar management skills, like, "A strainer, so I could stop the bad apples at the door."

I knew there was a reason I've always been self-employed.

#4 is the only question that might provide a small window into someone's analytical ability. The others are pretty inane and useless.

I did a lot of interviewing over the years, Though experience, it's easy to be good at assessing personality and technical strengths and weaknesses through simple conversation and asking probing (and relevant) questions from each applicant's resume.

When interviewing, red flags fly when you know where to look. Dumb questions are simply dumb questions.

I think Snidely hit it on the head. Those kinds of questions are unnecessary if the interviewer knows what he/she is doing. A lot of people are put in the position to interview and hire people without adequate training and/or experience to do the task, and end up flailing around a bit.

I imagine they have guidelines to the answers. You would have to be quick on your feet. Do you think someone who is quick of wit would have the better chance?

The questions are just odd, but i guess it's working for some companies.

When I hired, I would ask the applicant to describe a typical weekday for them, from getting up in the morning till going to bed at night. I could learn all sorts of things about them that I wouldn't dream of asking about. Useful to filter out the slugs, the drama queens, and the clueless.

UGH! The dreaded, tell me about yourself question. I hate those. Both asking and hearing them. I had to interview two people recently after more than a decade of not hiring and I was stymied, but I wouldn't go there. I stuck to the boring basics, so why do you want to come here from there type of things. Didn't matter anyhow, I think the person who was ultimately hiring had already decided before sending them over. I was only a second pair of logical ears/eyes.

:)

Yes, Alisande, I was wondering what the plastic bag meant. Do they mean a trash bag? I guess it's just to see the reaction to a puzzling question. The best answer would probably be, "no."

rob, the purpose of asking "Tell me about yourself" has nothing at all to do with an interviewer wanting to know biographical information. That information should be in the application and resume, if any.

It's a way to see how well or poorly the interviewee can express themselves orally on an impromptu basis. How comfortable the person is with speaking to a stranger with whom they NEED to speak. This topic is chosen for lack of anything better, it's a subject anyone should be able to launch into immediately. Other similar questions just to get the person speaking might be "Tell me about your last vacation", or "What did you do yesterday", or something similar. It's an open-ended question (always best for interviews), it can't be answered Yes or No or with a shoulder shrug.

I used to ask that question periodically and in listening to the response, I observed their friendliness, their eyes and gestures, their grammar and speaking voice, and completely ignored what they were saying. Try it next time you have the chance. For a job that requires oral communication with strangers, an employer's last choice is someone who is too shy, or talks with um, um, or like a valley girl, or with poor grammar and word choices that involve too much slang.

I've interviewed a blue million people and been interviewed. I hate that question. It's so broad and it's a fishing expedition. It's my personal preference to dislike it :)

It's like a police officer pulling you over and saying do you know why I pulled you over? Personally don't like it.

Since #10 is for a Software Engineer position they may be asking "How would assess the programming steps needed for simulating a shuffled deck of cards?" Expecting an answer that shows :

whether the candidate understands that a shuffle differs from a simple random selection

whether the candidate is aware of the pitfalls of common pseudo-random number generators

whether the candidate is likely to ask further questions to determine the specific requirements or if they'll plunge in and expend significant effort only to find they have either failed to meet some requirement they were unaware of or done much more work than needed

I have never been or never will be a BSer so I guess I'd flunk all those questions. To the #4 I would have to at least be thinking "who gives a rats *ss?" I'd be the engineer that didn't get the job! HAHA!

rob, if I had asked you the question, it wouldn't be a fishing expedition because I would be ignoring what you were saying and instead I'd be focusing on how you were saying it.

Think about it - cops ask that question you cite for the very same reason. It's to get the offending driver to start talking, to let the cop know where their head is at. The answer doesn't matter, the tone and the body language mean everything in that situation.

Poor interviewing is rampant. The first thing I thought of when I saw this was If you were a twee, what kind of twee would you be...

wrong snidely. They ask you because they want you to confess all you've done! Ask me all you want. I'll chat with you about most anything. But I'll hate that you asked it ;) It's my prerogative. From another website to show you, they are looking for things!:

__________
"I make a ton of traffic stops and give a lot of warnings. However, I've got no patience for liars on the stop.
Two people I nearly always cite: Liars, and people with radar detectors.

Two days ago I stopped a woman for going significantly over the speed
limit (20 MPH on a city street as I remember). Her defense was this: I'm
diabetic and can't feel my hands or feet so I have no control over the
speed of my vehicle.

I asked her 'are you sure you really want to be saying that to me'. She
stuck with her story so I cited her, then filled out paperwork to have
her license suspended/revoked due to her medical disability."

rob, after a career with a large professional organization that's probably in the US Top 20 for hiring new college grads, and working at a location where many hundreds of professionals (entry level and experienced) interviewed annually, I can tell you what we did and why. We developed interviewing hints and tips that everyone participating was given.

I don't need a random website quote to suggest otherwise. Ours was a business where interpersonal skills and quick thinking for professionals interacting with clients and one another were essential. I was never involved with interviews of clerical or administrative staff but I don't expect what they did was any different.

While hiring mistakes are inevitable, testing a recruit's speaking performance during the interview was essential.

Have a great weekend!

Snidely, I worked for the second largest brokerage firm in the world, and hired people. It does take skill to hire people, but there are many many ways to go about it. You won't convince me any more than I'd convince you of our own ways. I only read the person wrong once. They got past my boss too. He was really convincing. I read people really well and don't need them to tell me their best quality or worst quality or what they do on an average day.

Yeah, well I'll bet my dog is bigger than your dog. And does more tricks too.

You're just darn lucky you never interviewed with me, unless you would have been able to find a way to display your spunky attitude. I'm a pushover for that, anyone who could show me they had an opinion (even if wrong) and a desire to achieve goals would usually get a high rating from me.

Opinions aren't wrong snidely. But you gave me a really good laugh!

Any opinion that differs from my opinion is wrong. (just kidding)

In an interview context, there are wrong opinions. Opinions that are misinformed, subject matter misunderstood, obtained from a ignorant source, use whatever word you like. When a candidate comes in, having done some homework (a good thing), and in the conversation tells me that the biggest threat facing my business is X, something completely off the wall that ain't the case, that's a wrong opinion.

Because you believe it to be factually incorrect.