Glassdoor has its annual list out of the oddest of the oddball interview questions candidates get. Compared to previous years, this year’s list is tamer, less weird. Some of the questions even make a kind of good sense.
For example, Mckinsey & Company, the big, global consulting company, made the list with this: “If you were 80 years old, what would you tell your children?” Reasonable enough for a candidate who might be working on advice for a Fortune 500 company at some point.
Now last year, Clark Construction made the list, asking, ““A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?” Google was also there with one of its famous (infamous?) brain teasers: “How many cows in Canada?”
Animals were missing from this year’s list, but pizza came in for a couple:
- Apple is credited with, “If you were a pizza deliveryman how would you benefit from scissors?”
- Goldman Sachs asked, “How many square feet of pizza is eaten in the U.S. each year?”
What’s the weirdest one on the list? Maybe this one from Red Frog Events, “If you could sing one song on American Idol, what would it be?”
Ready To Quit?
Of course you are. Everyone who does a survey says pretty much the same thing: Nearly all of us are ready to go find another job. (What would be an interesting survey was to go back and find out how many people actually did, a number that the raw data I’ve seen says not as many as told the survey takers they would.)
But I digress. Once you’ve made it through the questions (Hint: Here’s my answer to Akamai’s “How does the Internet work?” question – Magic.), and you get an offer, and you accept it, you have to tell the boss you’re leaving. That can be one of those poignant, drama scenes, where you and the boss get sort of teary-eyed, and she tries to talk you out of it. Or it can be the opposite, along the lines of don’t let the door hit you in the rear.
Either way, there’s now an app for all that. Quit Your Job comes from The Ladders, the job board for people who think they can get a six-figure job by scouring listings. The instructions for its use are simple:
Tell the app why you’re leaving, what you’re planning on doing next, and our state-of-the-art messaging system will take care of the rest.
Just be sure you don’t intend to cross the bridge you just burned again. And just in case you haven’t caught on to this app, The Ladders offers these parting words:
This app is intended for entertainment purposes only and does not provide true quitting job notice functionality. (Duh.)