Interview questions: The wackier the better?

The release of ‘The Internship’ film featuring the Googleplex headquarters in Silicon Valley has brought brainteaser interview questions into the limelight once again as people consider whether they really work. Even though the infamous Google brainteasers are featured in their interviews during the film, Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, admits that they have now come to the conclusion that these type of questions are a “complete waste of time…They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

However, over the last few years, there has been an increasing trend during interviews to ask out-of-the-box questions in the hope of finding out a little more about how a candidate’s mind works. A recent Twitter campaign by Channel 5 TV sought to root out the wackiest of these questions. It resulted in thousands of past candidates tweeting their experiences which range from the inventive to the peculiar. Here are a few…

1) What US state would you get rid of?

2) If you could be any element on the periodic table, which would you be and why?

3) Would you rather have the body of a fish and a human head, or a human body and the head of a fish?

4) Did you lie as a child?

5) I am from the 17^th century; explain to me what the internet is…

6) Give me two reasons why I should hire you, and four reasons why I shouldn’t?

7) If you had cramp right now, would you cover it up so that the interview could continue as normal?

8) Tell me your best joke

9) Would you rather own a spaceship or a pet dinosaur?

10) If you were a breakfast cereal which would you be and why?

11) What’s the average number of blades of grass on an average British home’s lawn this summer?

12) If you had your life over again, how would you change it?