Twenty questions

Current mood: Questioning
Current music: Sweet jazz tunes by my friend Reinis - check out his MySpace site
Proverb of the day: Great minds think alike

How now, dear readers! Your humble blogger has not been sitting idly by since Christmas, despite the fact that I couldn't afford to go anywhere, both money-wise and time-wise. I have been keeping myself busy. And no, I don't just mean the post-Christmas shopping spree - although I would like to add, as a postscript to the last entry, that I have now acquired a nice pair of high-heeled long boots, which I am wearing right now. Like a good girl, I waited until after Christmas, and thus got the boots at a very reasonable price. Bargain!

Anyway, I am not here today to discuss boots of any length, or indeed at any length. No, what I have been working on since the last entry, with the help of a friend, is a list of interview questions. 'Interview questions?' I hear you cry. 'Who gives a toss about interview questions? What place have they in a light-hearted, gleefully irreverent blog?'

Don't worry, I fully intend to continue in the 'gleefully irreverent' vein. Some time ago, my friend Edsters mentioned that he had been drafted into an interview panel, to interview some unfortunate newbie for his organisation. He toyed with the idea of asking funny interview questions, although History relates that what he actually asked were normal, mundane, proper job-related questions. You can imagine my disappointment. So, in order to prevent the tragic loss of such a marvellous opportunity in the future, we have compiled a list of twenty Weird Interview Questions - little gems to be posed to job candidates at recruitment interviews. You are welcome to use these should you ever be in a position to interview potential employees, although (1) please ask us first, and (2) tell us what the outcome is. We would very much like to know.

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20 Weird Interview Questions

By Edsters & Aureala


Picture taken from: http://www.youthjobs.ca/FireworksImages/Interviewer.jpg

Work Attitude

1. Would you be happy working in an office where the sanity of your colleagues cannot be guaranteed?

2. If it takes five people to write five reports in five days, how many hours of overtime are you willing to work in order to do all five reports in one day?

3. When dealing with difficult situations at work, would you say that you take on a role more akin to that of a duck-billed platypus or a ring-tailed lemur? Why?

4. We're concerned that you only want this job to earn money, gain valuable work experience, and offer us the benefit of your skills and expertise. What can you say to prove us wrong?

5. What do you consider to be your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), and what benefits do you think our company will gain from owning you?

6. Do you consider that you usually take a proactive approach to your work? So why are you sitting here waiting for us to offer you a job?

7. What is it about working that appeals to you, rather than, say, running away to sea, or starting your own island nation in the South Pacific?

8. Do you pick out mistakes on restaurant menus? If so, how might your pedantry affect your future performance at our company? If not, to what cause do you attribute your deplorable deficiency in your powers of observation, and what are you going to do about it?

Personality Questions

9. If you were a biscuit, what kind of biscuit would you be?

10. Are you now, or have you ever been, the kind of person to move someone else's cheese? How do you justify your behaviour?

11. What's the one thing about you that you really wouldn't want us to know?

12. If your house were on fire, what's the first thing you'd take out, and why? How can you prove that your answer is your true one and not, say, something carefully thought up so that we would think you had a nice, well-balanced personality?

Thinking Outside the Box

13. What did the ugly duckling say to the rubber duck?

14. Please describe your employment history in a witty allegorical tale involving characters drawn from Aesop's fables.

15. Please give three examples of times when you've used your interpersonal skills to settle a major international conflict.

16. We like employees who are prepared for any eventuality. What would your plan of action be if a massive comet - similar to the putative comet that wiped out the dinosaurs - slammed into the Earth one Tuesday afternoon, two days before a major deadline?

17. It is a strange, but true, fact that 'Elvis' is an anagram of 'lives'. Describe your closest encounter with the King of Rock and Roll, and state your theory as to his current whereabouts. Please be warned that the management is firm in the belief that Elvis lives, and that any mention of the words 'death', 'died', 'deceased' or 'graveyard' in concurrence with the King will result in your immediately being shot. Sorry, did I say shot? I meant fired. Only I haven't hired you yet. OK, shot it is.

18. Can you recite the whole of 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers' backwards, and repeat it three times?

Metaphysical Conundrums

19. What did you do with the peanut?

20. Do you think these questions are leading anywhere?

And finally, because any list of 20 questions always comes with a bonus question:

Are You Paying Attention?

21. I have in my lunchbox the following: an ostrich egg and watercress sandwich made with pumperhumperdumpernickel bread; a cup of Nearly Instant Tomato Potato Soup; a multigrain, multiberry muffin; a packet of Oreos from the Dawn of Time; a banana with 'a.m.' written on it (for my Mid-Morning Banana Break); another banana with 'p.m.' written on it (for my Late Luncheon Banana Break); three cream crackers escorted by a scantily decorated tub of cream cheese; and a Warbly Marbly Black 'n' White ChocoBar. Please estimate the precise calorific value of my lunchbox (excluding its contents), to the nearest 0.001 of a kilocalorie.

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Well, I hope you enjoyed that, and found it very useful / informative / entertaining (circle all those that apply). Edsters and I are slowly compiling a list of possible answers to these rather tricky, or even sticky, questions. These will be posted in a later entry. In the meantime, please feel free to think up your own solutions and pop them in the comments box. Your suggestions will be much appreciated by the management.