Crazy Interview Questions. Can You Answer These Questions If Your Career Depends On It?

I remember sitting down in a tiny room with the founder of a startup.

Dressed in formal, I see this younger looking guy sit across the table in my dream work attire.

In T-shirt and shorts, he handed me a handout on Seedly.sg‘s website stats and asked if I have any suggestions on how I can improve it.

I heaved a sigh of relief.

Right up to that moment, I was preparing for some of the craziest questions which I saw online (imagine questions 10 times the difficulty of “sell me this pen”).

Getting to the answers for “sell me this pen”, here are some of the craziest interview questions that were asked.

Crazy interview questions asked by companies. Most of them are actually fun to answer.

Away from all the typical “how can you contribute to the company question in an interview, companies are getting more creative in terms of their interview question.

In fact, well-established companies such as Google, Apple, Grab and many other startups are realising that it takes a unique kind of questions to sieve out the talents from the thick pile of resume.

Here’s a list of crazy interview questions. Do you have the answer to them?

1. 25 racehorses, no stopwatch. 5 tracks. Figure out the top 3 fastest horses in the fewest number of races. – Facebook
   
2. There are 100 ants on this log.
   The log is X metres long.
   Each alternate ant will move in an opposite direction at X metres/minute and upon bumping into another ant, will reverse direction.
   How Long before all the ants are off the log? – Anywhr
3. Why are manhole covers round? – Google
   
4. Assuming you monopolised the table industry and is the only supplier selling tables to the whole of Singapore.
   What is the maximum number of tables you can sell?
5. If you were shipwrecked on a deserted island and had to choose from 3 people to help you, who would you choose?
   You can choose from ten people: the lawyer, the doctor, the carpenter, the ship’s captain, the politician, the high school teacher, the cook, the scientist, the soldier and the policeman.
6. What would the name of your debut album be? – Urban Outfitters
   
7. How many basketballs would fit in this room? – Delta Air Lines
   
8. How would you solve problems if you were from Mars? – Amazon
9. If you could be any animal in the world, what animal would you be and why? – Quora
10. We finish the interview and you step outside the office and find a lottery ticket that ends up winning $10 million. What would you do? – Quora
11. If you were a pizza delivery man, how would you benefit from scissors? – Apple
12. What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
13. How many cows are in Canada? – Google
14. What would you do if you found a penguin in the freezer? – Trader Joe’s
15. How will you get 2,000 shares on a piece of content you wrote with zero marketing dollar? – Seedly
16. Can you say ‘Peter Pepper Picked a Pickled Pepper’ and cross-sell a washing machine at the same time? – MasterCard
17. What songs best describes your work ethic? – Dell
18. Calculate the angle of two clock pointers when time is 11:50 – Bank of America
19. Describe to me the process and benefits of wearing a seat belt.
20. If a celebrity was raped in the guest’s home and demands Airbnb to compensate her reputational damage, what would you do? – Airbnb
21. What is the best mistake you have ever made in life? – Airbnb
22. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
23. How many cans of paint would you need to paint one wing of a 747? – Netflix
24. How many cars are there in Singapore? – Facebook
25. How many people watch Youtube in Singapore in the last 1 hour? – Youtube
26. You’ve been given an elephant. Giving it away or selling it is not an option.
    What would you do with the elephant?

How to answer “sell me this pen” sort of interview questions?

As one can see, there is no preparing for the kind of curveballs that these companies may throw at you.

Before getting all freak out over some of these questions, here are some tips to help you deal with it.

Before the interview

• Find out more about the company and understand your job scope really well. Understand what types of qualities is the job looking for.
• This way, no matter how much your interviewers tweak the interview questions, you can answer from an angle which demonstrates the qualities.
• Practice answering questions with your friends. Ask them to throw anything random at you to train up your confidence.

During the interview

• Stay Calm.
  There can be fireworks inside your head, but you need to appear calm and confident. This can be exhibited through your posture and facial expression.
• it is important to also make sure that your answer exhibits characteristics that the position is looking for.