When it come to interview questions there are several types of tough – from the incredibly technical to the daft, via the ones where you are supposed to talk about your bad points in a way that doesn't make the prospective employer recoil.
The careers website Glassdoor has compiled a list of what it claims are the 25 toughest questions asked at UK job interviews, based on stories posted on its site. If you think a good job interview should give you the opportunity to demonstrate your skills and personality to show you are equipped for the position and can work well with the people who are already there, then some of them don't seem unreasonable.
Being asked "Who is your hero", as one candidate was, or "What are the three words your parents would describe you with?", doesn't seem especially challenging. And should someone seeking a role as a technologist at Marks & Spencer really be surprised to be asked about the relative quality of the retailer's menswear and homeware? But others are more opaque or challenging, or both.
It seems there are answers to, and logic behind, some of the quirkier sounding ones. "How do you fit a giraffe in a fridge?", asked of a UBS sales trading candidate, should apparently be answered "Open the door and put him in" so you sound like someone who doesn't over-complicate things. (Although, to be honest, I think it's less complicated to assume the giraffe won't fit in the fridge than to risk having to cut the roof off or fold the animal in half.) But some questions sound so like the kind you mull over in the pub late on a Friday night that you can't help wondering what, if anything, the interviewer had planned to achieve.
Here are some of the rest of the top 25:
• "What makes you happy about work on a Friday evening?"– Asked at Tesco (international deployment manager candidate)
• "If your friend was seriously injured and you had to get him to a hospital, would you speed and go through a red light?"– Asked at Barlow Lyde & Gilbert (trainee solicitor candidate)
• "Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck sized horses?"– Asked at BHP Billiton (dry bulk marketer candidate)
• "Why is 99% not good enough?"– Asked at Parcelforce Worldwide (delivery and collection manager candidate)
• "In a fight between a lion and a tiger, who would win and why?"– Asked at Capco (associate consultant candidate)
• "How many ways can you get a needle out of a haystack?"– Asked at Macquarie bank (senior Java developer candidate)
• "How would you explain Facebook to your Grandma?"– Asked at Huddle (sales executive candidate)
Some of the answers candidates gave are also posted on the Glassdoor site but the "right" answers will often depend on the context. "Employers are not looking for the right answer when asking tough interview questions, but rather, they want to learn more about a candidate, how they think critically, and how they can problem solve on the spot," says Scott Dobroski from the site. "The worst thing you can do is say, 'I don't know,' or just give a one-worded response without really thinking through your response."
Have you encountered any of these questions, and if so what did you say? Or have you been hit with any that were trickier to answer?
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
