Career Road Map by Lees John;

Author:Lees, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: John Lees, career, career change, job seeking, job hunting, CV, interview, interview preparation, promotion, outplacement, reputation, personal branding, confidence, How To Get A Job You Love
ISBN: 4681467
Publisher: Andrews UK Ltd.
Published: 2016-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Wacky Questions

While many interview questions can be predicted, some come at you completely out of the blue: ‘Is a Jaffa cake a cake or a biscuit?’ ‘How far is the sun from the earth?’ ‘Name five uses for a stapler, without the staples’.

Interviewers ask wildcard questions for a range of reasons. Sometimes a bored interviewer throws one in just to spice things up. Some genuinely believe that the question reveals your ‘true’ personality or tests how you respond under pressure. Interview questions should be designed to find out if you can do the job, but off-the-wall questions feel very unpredictable and can easily wrong-foot you.

We’re not talking about questions like ‘what are your strengths and weaknesses?’. Questions like that are difficult, not unexpected, and you should prepare strong answers. Equally, if the job requires quick mental arithmetic, watch out for questions like ‘how many light bulbs are in this building?’ or ‘how many litres of milk would you need to fill this room?’. Remember, if you’re asked to make calculations under pressure it’s the thought process that counts, and an intelligent approximation rather than an exact figure is often acceptable.

Many interviewees report completely wacky questions apparently aimed at pushing their buttons: ‘if you were a song, what song would you be?’ or ‘what’s on your mantelpiece at home?’. These questions often seem unrelated to the real world of work, but sometimes they test lateral thinking - e.g. ‘what three things would you take on a trip to Mars?’

Respond with good humour. Don’t get offended or flustered, or freeze like a rabbit in the headlights. These questions have the same role as playful final questions coming at the end of Question Time on TV, and can bring out personality aspects more than serious topics. So don’t get too wrapped up in the complications of the question - a relaxed response works best, showing you find the question entertaining. Play for time: ‘Wow - great question. While I’m digging around for a good answer, tell me - how do people usually answer that?’

You may be asked ‘What If?’ questions which are entirely work-related. If you were up for a hotel receptionist job, you might have to say how you would handle an angry customer who refuses to pay his bill. One candidate for a technical job was asked ‘if I put you in a sealed room with a phone that had no dial tone, how would you fix it?’.

Some wildcard questions probe matching skills, for example, ‘sell me this pencil!’ might be relevant to a sales job, particularly if it involves thinking on your feet. Plan ahead by imagining the items that are likely to be within the interviewer’s grasp (pencil, paper clip, stapler, coaster...). Be prepared at the drop of a hat to explain features and benefits of these objects. People buy from people - ideally from people they like, so work just as hard at getting a smile as winning the sale. One sales technique is to quickly get the

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