I've a job interview in a few days... first one in about 20 years!

I'm reading through some stuff about interviews and it all seems pretty obvious and boring to me... so I'm drifting off into lalaland.....

I remember when I was getting interviewed for a job where I'd be working with mostly men and during the interview I was asked to tell a joke. I told a very raunchy one (figuring gender stereotypes were well at work in this guy's head) and got the job.

What's the weirdest job interview question that you've been asked? How did you respond? Did you get the job?

"Are you aware that this is a downtown location, we have no lawn here?"



The interviewer was dealing with the issue of my having been fired from my previous position for, allegedly, parking on the grass.

"What language do they speak in Scotland......Oh, wait a minute it's Dutch isn't it?"

I was asked a riddle!
You are in a dinghy, in a pool, and were holding a metal bar. If you dropped the bar into the water, would the water level go up, down or stay the same?
Supply answer and explain your thought process within 30 seconds!
Supposed to show rapid thought process!
Got the right answer, but not the job! (Thankfully, as the company went bust a year later!)

Stay the same.
The water displacement would not alter.

Had an entire interview in French, which I don't speak so quite the challenge.

This one might be considered weird but be prepared for the worst. Questions such as what is your greatest weakness (read: worst defect)?

Since nobody is perfect one must own up to something so be prepared to have an answer ready.

I once had an interview with a lady, the company president, who asked me to write something for her. Not more than 200 words and I had to do it right there on the spot and it had to be spontaneous. I complied. She told me that she could tell a lot from a person's handwriting.

I never did get that job although it amused me to think at the time that it could be worse. Far worse if you catch my drift?

I do not know whether that would be done today what with our preoccupation with civil rights.

While in the dinghy the metal bar is displacing its weight of water, but when it is dropped in, it only displaces its volume of water, and as the metal bar is denser than water, the water level should go down.............. I think!

I was asked 'would you like one of my cigarettes ?'. That was 20 years ago at the Ford Motor Co plant on Merseyside. I said yes.

I was once asked to calculate how many household light bulbs are sold in Canada in a year. The interviewer didn't know the answer; he just wanted to see how I'd go about working it out.

I looked it up later. I was only out by 5%.

I read this recently.............

An Ethical Dilemma - What Would You Do?
You are driving along in your car on a wild, stormy night. You pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.

2. An old friend who once saved your life.

3. The perfect man (or) woman you have been dreaming about.

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car.
Think before you continue reading.


This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application.
You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first; or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back. However, you may never be able to find your perfect dream lover again.
The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer.
I love this, I may actually use it sometime for an interview situation.
WHAT DID HE SAY?
He simply answered: "I would give the car keys to my old friend, and let him take the lady to the hospital. I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the woman of my dreams."
Never forget to ""Think Outside of the Box."

For my new job, I was asked a very challenging question. "What do the people who don't like you say about you"

As the only person I know doesn't like me these days is quite severely mentally ill and sent all manner of false allegations to my employer, causing me to end up losing my old job... Truth sometimes is stranger than fiction... anyway I digress... I came up with a... this is what my life was like before I came to Canada, and these are the steps I took to make it better.

I got the job. And an apology for the question when I started...

Before my present career I worked in sales management and had to hire and fire people as part of my job. I used the greatest weakness question and then a task. I put a cheap biro and an expensive waterman pen in front of them and asked the candidate to choose one and give me their sales pitch for the pen. The waterman is so nice it sells itself so if the candidate chose the harder to sell cheap biro and sold well, especially using humour, they were in.

The worse answer to the weakness question was that the candidate wasn't good dealing with people they didn't know well. I asked did they know they had applied to be a sales rep?

In 1986, as a raw graduate, I had an interview with one of the big gold mining companies. They were London-headquartered but mining in South Africa, which was still under the yoke of apartheid. It was a cracking opportunity. It was in global PR. I saw it as a brilliant training ground. If you can do PR for an outfit like that, you can do it for anyone. The money was great, too (£15 to start, in 1986!!!!!!!).

Killer question.

'What are your views on apartheid?'.

You can only really, honestly, answer that two ways.

A) I am a racist bastard and thinks it's wonderful.
B) I think your company are racist bastards and I'll get me coat.

In the same situation today, I would answer completely differently.

Some 40 years ago I applied for a job with Eaton's, a huge canadian retailer at the time, now defunct. I was asked if I smoked to which I replied yes. I then was warned that I would not be able to smoke on the job if I joined the company. I found that odd. It was a personal belief of the company's founder that smoking was bad.

In other words he was correct but imposed his own standard on employees.