Questions like this are terrifying at first, but there really is a reason for them. Your best plan to approach a surprising question like this is to take a few moments to try to figure out why they’re asking it. The question above (and its siblings, like what kind of animal you would be, what color, what breed of dog, which house the Sorting Hat would put you in, etc.) are basic who are you? questions. They want to get a sense of you on a deeper level to see how you are likely to fit in with the organization. Similar questions include:
· If you won the mega-millions lottery, after you paid everything off and did all the traveling you wanted, what would you do with the money? (This gets at values.)
· If you could be a superhero, what would your powers be? (Ditto.)
· If you could have dinner with anyone, real or fictitious, living or dead, who would you choose and why? (This lets them know who you admire and why.)
Another type of difficult and surprising interview question looks at your problem-solving skills in a deeper way. These questions are designed to assess how your brain works when you have an unusual situation to address. Some examples:
· How many ping-pong balls would it take to fill this room? (Your actual answer doesn’t matter as long as you walk them through how you’d figure it out. If the job you’re applying for doesn’t involve this type of complex problem-solving, you aren’t likely to get asked a question like this.)
· You’ve been shrunk to the size and mass of a [small coin, often a dime or a nickel] and placed in a blender. The blades are about to start. What do you do? (This lets them see how your logical thought-process works. Although my favorite answer to this comes from a social work candidate who said, “I’d ask you to take me out of this blender and return me to my original state.”
· If you were a pizza delivery person, how would you benefit from scissors? (This looks at your creativity and outside-the-box thinking, especially under pressure.)
· How does the internet work? (Again, your logic brain, though you are welcome to be creative with this answer.)
The main thing is not to freak out when you get asked this type of question. They’re not really there to stump you, but to surprise an interesting and honest answer out of you. I recommend starting any hard question, and especially these weird ones, with something like, “Wow. Give me a sec to think about that.” That gives you a little space to wonder why they’ve asked you, and once you have that, you have an idea of how to answer it. And the good news is that you can throw these questions right back at your interviewers when they ask for your questions!
