40 Grueling Interview Questions Asked By America's Top Companies
Part of being prepared for a job interview means giving some thought to the types of problem-solving or reasoning skills that might be relevant to the job you're seeking. If you're interviewing for a job as a customer support technician, you probably won’t be asked for a summary analysis of string theory or be asked to explain why manhole covers are round. But if you're trying to get hired as an engineer at Google, that's just the sort of left-field test of general knowledge and curiosity that you can expect.
An employer might ask strange questions to see how you handle a suddenly stressful situation or to determine how you go about solving a certain type of problem. Before your interview, consider the type of knowledge or problem-solving that's required of the job you're seeking, and ponder a few abstractions like those in the following list. The goal is not to guess what will be asked—guessing right is far too unlikely. It's simply a mental exercise that can help prepare you for a similar question. So, without further ado, following are actual interview questions,* taken from some well-known companies, that we think are the top 40 most interesting or bizarre.
- If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out? (Goldman Sachs)
- How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? (Google)
- What was your best MacGyver moment? (Schlumberger)
- How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine? (IBM)
- What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle? (Volkswagen)
- Sell me an invisible pen. (Procter & Gamble)
- How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? (Google)
- Would you be okay hearing "no" seven out of ten times? (Enterprise Rent-a-car)
- Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a number with the hint "higher" or "lower" for each guess? (Google)
- Why do you think only a small percentage of the population makes over 150K? (New York Life)
- Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval? (Microsoft)
- If you could be any superhero, who would it be? (ATT)
- You have a birthday cake and have exactly 3 slices to cut it into 8 equal pieces. How do you do it? (Blackrock)
- How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? (Google)
- How many traffic lights are there in Manhattan? (Argus)
- Why are manhole covers round? (Google and Microsoft)
- How are M&M’s made? (US Bank)
- What is the philosophy of martial arts? (Aflac)
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you? (Capital One)
- Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew. (Google)
- How would you move Mount Fuji? (Microsoft)
- How many hair salons are there in Japan? (Boston Consulting)
- If both a taxi and a limo were priced the same, which one would you choose? (Best Buy)
- What are 5 uncommon uses of a brick, not including building, layering, or using as a paper-weight? (Kaplan Education)
- How would you sell me eggnog in Florida in the summer? (Expedia)
- Are your parents disappointed with your career aspirations? (Fisher Investments)
- Given a dictionary of words, how do you calculate the anagrams for a new word? (Amazon)
- Tell me about your life from Kindergarten onwards. (Merrill Lynch)
- A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? (Google)
- What do wood and alcohol have in common? (Guardsmark)
- What is your table tennis strategy? (Citigroup)
- How would you test a keyboard? (Microsoft)
- Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years. (Boston Consulting)
- How many ridges are there around a quarter? (Deloitte)
- An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear? (Epic Systems)
- How would you design an alarm clock? (Microsoft)
- How many basketballs can you fit in this room? (Google)
- If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner? (Amazon)
- You have 8 pennies, 7 weigh the same, one weighs less. You also have a judge’s scale. Find the penny that weighs less in less than 3 steps. (Intel)
- Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest 3 horses. In each race, only 5 horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required? (Bloomberg Financial)
What strange question(s) have you been asked in an interview and how did you answer it?
More Resources
Microsoft's certification paths can be complex and confusing; you might not be aware of many important details about each path and how Microsoft manages their certification offerings. In this...
If any of these questions came up in an interview I'd walk out! How ridiculous!
#39: Put 3 pennies on each side of the scale. If the scale balances, weigh the other two and choose the lighter.
Otherwise put the three heavier pennies with the first two (that weren't weighed), set one of the remaining pennies aside and weigh the other two. If the scales balance choose the one you set aside. Otherwise, select the lighter of the two.
That's the point, they don't want people like you. WINNING
I had an interview in Las Vegas and got - How many flights does southwest have daily in the United States?
these are very serious companies and are not asking these questions just to mess with you. they are using them to analyze how you think and solve problems, as well as some having you do difficult things that are necessary in the business.
walking out would giving up at that point, and if you worked that hard for it, went to all the school to go there, you wouldn't give it up so easy.
I actually got asked this: 'If you were god, how would you design the bladder?'.
You're wrong about #39. You would put 4 on each side and remove the heavier side. You then split the lighter side into 2 piles and weigh them. Remove the heavier again and split the remaining 2 to find the lighter one.
I know #13: Cut it twice (perpendicular to each other) making 4 pieces. Then cut horizontally through the whole cake. The people you like get the frosting pieces.
I know #13: Cut it twice (perpendicular to each other) making 4 pieces. Then cut horizontally through the whole cake. The people you like get the frosting pieces.
Wrong about the pennies... put three on each side and if they balance its one of the two left out, balance them to find the lighter. If they don't balance take the lighter of the piles of three and put one penny from this pile on each side. If these two balance, it is the odd man out. Otherwise the lighter of the two is your one in eight.
The splitting in half each time doesn't work. That takes 3 steps. You are meant to do it in LESS than 3.
I don't think these questions can be taken very seriously. For example, you'd probably only know the answer to #8 if you've heard this one already.
People usually say manhole covers are round because that shape can't fall into the hole. A square or rectangular cover could fall through the diagonal of the hole. Wrong answer.
Manhole covers are round because manholes are round.
"You're wrong about #39. You would put 4 on each side and remove the heavier side. You then split the lighter side into 2 piles and weigh them. Remove the heavier again and split the remaining 2 to find the lighter one."
No, you're wrong. That's three steps and the question asked for less than three steps. What's more, when someone posted the correct solution, you couldn't even recognize that it was correct.
Companies ask these questions to weed out people like you.
Re#39. You fail, that would tale 3 steps. The question says to d it in less than 3 steps. The first commenter had it right, weigh 3 on each side.
I used to coach volleyball and I had it on my resume as a hobby/activity. I was interviewing for a mechanical engineering job and a hiring manager once asked me, "I see you play a lot of volleyball, so how good are you with electrical problems?"
I just laughed, asked him to repeat the question and then told him, "I'm not trained at electrical engineering." I didn't get the job.
Divide that 8 pennies in to 6 and 2 then separate 6 into 3&3 .. weigh this 3&3 if the weigh is equal then weigh the left out 2 to get the defect one.. or if u got difference in the first weigh process get that 3 which shown lower in weight.. separate it to 2&1 then weigh the 2 if found u got it or else the left out one :-).. U can do it in 2 steps....
Sharath :-)
Crazy questions from the big companies ... does this give you an insight into the way they think?
manholes are round because that way they can't fall down the hole
I've been asked to explain texting to a 18th century man!
And I thought I was the sensible one. Thanks for settnig me straight.
#13, you cut the cake in half, laterally, horizontally, and diagonally
#13: If all 8 people want frosting, you cut it into even fourths, and then make the third "slice" a circle such that pi*(b-a)^2/4= pi*(a-0)^2/4, where b-0 is the radius of the cake. You then have 8 pieces with equal top surface areas, and you've only cheated a little bit...
Thanks-a-mundo for the post. Keep writing.
Post new comment