‘When Is It OK To Lie?’ And Other Bizarre Questions You Might Be Asked In A Job Interview
Posted April 29, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Why do you want the position? What relevant skills do you possess? What’s your biggest weakness?
You’ve probably been asked these questions many times in job interviews. But here are a few you probably haven’t heard:
When is it OK to lie? What would you do with 100 Christmas trees in July? If you were a cereal, what kind would you be?
All of the above were asked in recent interviews in the U.S., and a new company aims to help prospective workers prepare for such bizarre questions, not to mention other aspects of difficult interviews.
Glassdoor.com is an online jobs site that launched this week, and one of its features is an area for interview reviews. Users submit their interview experience anonymously and in exchange they receive access to other people’s stories.
So far nearly 2,000 job interviews have been reviewed and posted, from more than 1,000 companies.
The information includes general descriptions of the interview including whether it was one-on-one or a panel, unexpected or difficult questions, and whether the overall experience was positive or negative.
For example, one candidate for a position at a senior centre in Arizona warned others against the job, saying that not only did the company lose his application, an executive who scheduled an interview with him took that day off.
Glassdoor also lists salaries and reviews of jobs, and companies use the information for feedback.
So, wondering what companies asked the off-the-wall questions above?
The question about lying was asked of a project manager applicant at Integer Group, a marketing agency. The cereal query was asked in an interview for a financial analyst at Cisco Systems, and the Christmas tree question came up in a marketing interview at Visa Inc.
The company with the easiest interview ranking was Bank of America. Amazon was scored as the most difficult; PricewaterhouseCoopers received the highest positive rating; while Google was rated the most negative experience.
