Google is renowned for posing bizarre questions to job candidates lucky enough to be called in for an interview. If you’re applying for a job with the company, you might want to think about how many golf balls can fit on a school bus, or design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.
But brain teasers turned interview questions are no longer exclusive to the search giant. Judging from Glassdoor’s newly released list of the top oddball interview questions of 2015, companies such as Squarespace, Airbnb, and Banana Republic also put forward unusual inquiries that have undoubtedly made more than one candidate squirm.
After analyzing the wide array of interview questions job seekers have posted on the site, here are the 10 strangest questions of 2014 according to Glassdoor – along with the most upvoted user-suggested answer.
1) Airbnb: What would you do if you were the one survivor of a plane crash?
Top-rated answer: “Be glad I was flying solo that day.”
2) Squarespace: What’s your favorite ’90s jam?
Top-rated answer: “Blackberry jam — they still have that in 2015, right?”
3) Dropbox: If you woke up and had 2,000 unread emails and could only answer 300 of them, how would you choose which ones to answer?
Top-rated answer: “The automated pre-filtering I have set up should group the most important ones into key folders. Then I would just scan through the sender names and subject lines for the most critical ones.”
Source: Emma Snider
How to Handle Curveball Questions Without Panicking
Weird interview questions are not really about the answer itself. they're designed to see how you think on your feet when there's no textbook response to fall back on. The worst thing you can do is freeze up or try to give the answer you think they want.
Instead, take a breath and talk through your reasoning out loud. Interviewers want to see your thought process, not a perfect reply. If the question catches you off guard, it's completely fine to say, that's an interesting one, let me think for a second. That shows composure, which is exactly what they're testing for.
Remember, they invited you in because something on your resume caught their eye. The interview is just a conversation to see if the fit goes both ways. Approach it that way and the oddball questions lose their power to rattle you.
Preparing for the Unexpected
You can't predict every question, but you can walk in ready for anything. Know your own story cold, have a few examples ready for common behavioral questions, and practice staying calm when something throws you. Confidence comes from preparation, and preparation is something you can control.
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