most irrelevant interview questions asked

dangtran09

yesterday, a interviewer asked what i thought was completely immaterial to the tech position i applied.

"my wife dropped her wedding ring in a cup of coffee. when she took it out it was completely dry, why do u think so?"

let's hear yours...:D

steve13ad

I've heard the exact question before except it was a cup of water.

The coffee was frozen, it shows you willing to think "outside the box"

eansdad

Or maybe to see how quick someone is. If they answer with "Wow, really" you know they aren't the quickest person. If someone has to think about it for 5 minutes they to fail. A quick response of "The cup is empty" or "It's frozen" or something cleaver would mean they are on the ball.

chmorin

I really hate those questions. I think if you want to test my ability to think outside the box, give me a real world or logical situation. IE: I have 30 marbles and a scale. All of them are the same size, but one has a different weight. How can I figure out which one it is with the least amount of mathematical steps.

wesamess

probably because it's coffee grinds?
I've never had a irrelevent question of that randomness besides practice ones like...if you were a fruit, what fruid would you be?

pert

Question I hate the most is what do you prioritize when you have multiple things going on at once. How is this question ever relevant? You prioritize the most important things, then its mostly a function of time required for each project. There is nothing within this question that in anyway reflects on ability to think or manage or anything remotely useful. Everytime someone asks me this I immediately regret applying for the company because its always some know nothing HR person going through the motions about a position they have no idea about.

Paperlantern

chmorin wrote: »

I really hate those questions. I think if you want to test my ability to think outside the box, give me a real world or logical situation. IE: I have 30 marbles and a scale. All of them are the same size, but one has a different weight. How can I figure out which one it is with the least amount of mathematical steps.

Is it a balance scale? Or just a scale?

My approach in either case would probably be divide them into 15 and 15, weigh them, the half that weighs more, keep them, set aside the other group. do 7 and 7, if they weigh the same, eureka, you lucked out and the leftover is the denser one. If not, repeat this step until you end up singling one out or get down to 1. Youll only have to perform 4 weighings.

15 and 15 -> first weighing eliminates half
7 and 7 -> second
3 and 3 -> third
1 and 1 -> fourth

Thats just how i would do it. *shrug* There may be another way... who knows, as with the other coffee example there may be different answers, ie, coffee was frozen, it was coffee GROUNDs, or BEANS, etc

As far as being asked these questions, i dont recall ever having been asked one. Ive only ever had 1 real traditional interview and job application. The rest were after id broken into the IT industry and had made a circle of contacts. The rest was history.

BradleyHU

steve13ad wrote: »

I've heard the exact question before except it was a cup of water.

The coffee was frozen, it shows you willing to think "outside the box"

i was gonna say, it was a cup of coffee grinds/beans

Deathgomper

"If you could be any animal in the world what would it be and why"

My answer:

"A Falcon, because I want to be at the top of my food chain and be able to have good vision of what's going on around me." Best I could do on the spot.

I told a coworker at the job I had at the time and he said, "hopefully they don't think you want to be that just to get high."

Pratt2

One has a different weight does not mean one weighs more. Heh

sambuca69

I recently had an interview where I was aked what order I put my sneakers on and if I then tie the laces in the same order. I think my guy may have been smoking pot or something, who knows. needless to say, this annoyed me to no end.

i keep my sneakers tied and just slip them on and off, if anyone was curious what i answered.

MechaniX

"How often do you shave?"

Hypntick

sambuca69 wrote: »

I recently had an interview where I was aked what order I put my sneakers on and if I then tie the laces in the same order. I think my guy may have been smoking pot or something, who knows. needless to say, this annoyed me to no end.

i keep my sneakers tied and just slip them on and off, if anyone was curious what i answered.

Same answer I would have given. Also, whatever is closest to me is what I put on first.

mikedisd2

wesamess wrote: »

probably because it's coffee grinds?
I've never had a irrelevent question of that randomness besides practice ones like...if you were a fruit, what fruid would you be?

Since the majority of our banana plantations have just been wiped out by a cyclone, I'd be a banana. That would make me expensive and in high demand.

jamesleecoleman

Part of my last interview went something like this....

Them: Do you like coffee??
Me: No
Them: Do you like tea?
Me: Yes

I found it really odd for them to ask me that. I never did drink tea in the office downstairs with them but I did drink a lot of it in the upstairs office though

ibcritn

On the topic of Interview questions this is a rather good link:
Security Interview Questions | InfoSec Daily

This would be more of a "Relevant Interview Questions", but I figured those interested in this thread might find that link interesting.