How can there be a right answer to that question?

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For every recruiter, think tank leader and CHRO we work with, there’s a candidate who has been on the other side of that desk. Sometimes candidates ask us odd questions and sometimes as jobseekers ourselves, we find ourselves in the hot seat, just like Jonathan Kestenbaum(@JKenstenbaum), executive director of Talent Tech Labs:

“I once had an interviewer put a math problem on the whiteboard right when I sat down. He didn’t say anything about it to me so I brushed it off. At the end of the interview, he asked me the answer to the math problem. I looked at him and asked for five minutes to answer the problem.”

Wow, tough task! Asking for a little time seems fair, but like life, some interviews just pakistan phone number library are not fair. Companies like Google and Facebook have long been known to stump their interviewees with puzzles and riddles, but Dyson (yes the vacuum company) have gone next level with puzzles you have to unlock to even GET to the interview. The British company got rid of the typical application and makes potential applicants solve a series of puzzles across the internet, beginning with a brainteaser video.

Interestingly enough, that might be even easier than the task Kestenbaum was given. His result after asking for a minute or two to solve the math problem?

“He said the guy who I need for this job should have been thinking through that answer throughout the interview,” said Kestenbaum. “Let’s just say I didn’t get the job.” You can research some commonly used hiring practices, including puzzles on this Quora string if that’s the sort of thing you’re into.

An Odd Duck of a Question
Of course, interviewing for a marketing gig will ALWAYS take the cake when it comes to strange interview questions. Liz Bardetti, VP of Marketing for Cybergrants, a corporate philanthropy software company headquartered in Boston, recalled a few interesting questions from her agency days.

“Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?”

What do you even say to that? How could that question possibly impact your ability to do a job? Oddball questions are the topic of a whole lot of articles in our space and rightfully so. When you spend most of your days interviewing people, we’re all liable to start asking duck-related questions at some point. But before you do, try some slightly more human interview questions on your (frightened) candidates.