Say Goodbye to Ridiculous Interview Questions

How many window washers are there in Cleveland? How many planes are flying over Philadelphia right now? How many cows are there in Canada?

For years, these types of ridiculous interview questions have become routine in job interviews across a wide variety of industries. But what are interviewers really looking for when they throw these questions at you—and what kind of answers should you give?

But before you start studying major metropolitan flight plans or the Canadian farmer’s almanac, take hope. Many organizations are now abandoning these interview techniques including the companies that are most famous for adopting them, namely Microsoft and Google.

Career coaches caution that these types of unanswerable questions do not tend to encourage a positive interview experience for a candidate. Instead, people become flustered or focus too much on finding a single solution. In most cases however, the interviewer is only trying to assess how the candidate goes about solving the problem—his or her actual answer being of much less importance.

Google’s Head of People Operations Laszlo Bock explained to the New York Times exactly why his team finds ridiculous interview questions to be ultimately useless.

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart. Instead, what works well are structured behavioral interviews, where you have a consistent rubric for how you assess people, rather than having each interviewer just make stuff up,” Bock explained.

Bock gave examples of more informative questions such as asking an interviewee to recall a challenge he faced on the job.

Another major concern of hiring managers today is ensuring that the candidate has a positive experience—whether he is hired or not. When an interviewer spends more time asking curveball questions than asking about a candidate’s experience, that prospective hire can feel his time has been wasted.

Trouble is, the damage done in the interview process can have a long-term impact on the company’s success. One recent study found that 42% of candidates who reported a negative application experience would never look for work at that company again. What’s more, 22% of these workers would warn others never to work there and 9% would caution others to avoid the company as a customer.

In another recent study from LinkedIn, 83% of candidates reported that a negative interview experience could change their mind about a company they once held a favorable opinion of.

But some companies will never be convinced to stick with the classic interview questions such as What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? But recognizing that asking a curveball question may not be informative, some interviewers are finding nonconventional ways of asking important analytical brainteasers that are relevant to the job.

For example, one worker at Amazon interviewing for a product development position recalls being asked what he would pitch to CEO Jeff Bezos if the big guy himself offered him $1 million to launch his best idea. This question, while still unusual, gives the candidate a chance to show his creativity while still demonstrating why he would be good in a role that creates innovative products for the company.

At Google, candidates for the role of software engineer have reported being asked how they would organize shirts in a crowded closet. While there is no single answer to this question, the candidate’s thought process can give the interviewer insight into how he might approach an organizational problem that arises in the company’s software.

While being asked how many windows there are in New York may not be anyone’s idea of a relevant interview question, some candidates may welcome a creative change of pace. After being asked Tell us something about yourself in dozens of interviews, being asked a nontraditional question might give the candidate a new perspective on his own experience that he might not have realized previously.