Glassdoor.com, a venture-backed online career and workplace community, has self-reportedly culled through tens of thousands interview questions that job seekers have shared on the site in 2010, and selected a number of weird ones.
Some of them are pretty bizarre, some are downright hilarious.
Go to the Glassdoor blog for the top 25 oddball interview questions, but below are the ones from technology companies, since I reckon you’d be most interested in those.
Don’t forget to list some grueling interview questions you’ve had to answer in your career in the comment section!
“How many basketballs can you fit in this room?” – asked at Google.
“If you could be any superhero, who would it be?” – asked at AT&T.
“Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum numbers guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make?” – asked at Facebook.
“If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner?” – asked at Amazon.
“There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?” – asked at Apple.
“How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?” – asked at IBM.
“You have 8 pennies, 7 weight the same, one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the one that weighs less in less than 3 steps.” – asked at Intel.
“How many bottles of beer are drank in the city over the week?” – asked at The Nielsen Company.
Pro tip, you can view the answers given by job seekers for the listed interview questions as well. Some of them are quite amusing as well.
Also check out Glassdoor’s List of Naughty and Nice CEOs (TCTV).
Alright, Monthy Python time (thanks, commenter):