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40 Grueling Interview Questions Asked By America's Top Companies

maniac

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maniac Grand Master

maniac

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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. *These questions and the companies they are attributed to were culled from several online resources, including Wikipedia, Moneywatch, BNet, Glassdoor, and others. 1.If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out? (Goldman Sachs) 2.How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? (Google) 3.What was your best MacGyver moment? (Schlumberger) 4.How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine? (IBM) 5.What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle? (Volkswagen) 6.Sell me an invisible pen. (Procter & Gamble) 7.How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? (Google) 8.Would you be okay hearing "no" seven out of ten times? (Enterprise Rent-a-car) 9.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) 10.Why do you think only a small percentage of the population makes over 150K? (New York Life) 11.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) 12.If you could be any superhero, who would it be? (ATT) 13.You have a birthday cake and have exactly 3 slices to cut it into 8 equal pieces. How do you do it? (Blackrock) 14.How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? (Google) 15.How many traffic lights are there in Manhattan? (Argus) 16.Why are manhole covers round? (Google and Microsoft) 17.How are M&M’s made? (US Bank) 18.What is the philosophy of martial arts? (Aflac) 19.On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you? (Capital One) 20.Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew. (Google) 21.How would you move Mount Fuji? (Microsoft) 22.How many hair salons are there in Japan? (Boston Consulting) 23.If both a taxi and a limo were priced the same, which one would you choose? (Best Buy) 24.What are 5 uncommon uses of a brick, not including building, layering, or using as a paper-weight? (Kaplan Education) 25.How would you sell me eggnog in Florida in the summer? (Expedia) 26.Are your parents disappointed with your career aspirations? (Fisher Investments) 27.Given a dictionary of words, how do you calculate the anagrams for a new word? (Amazon) 28.Tell me about your life from Kindergarten onwards. (Merrill Lynch) 29.A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? (Google) 30.What do wood and alcohol have in common? (Guardsmark) 31.What is your table tennis strategy? (Citigroup) 32.How would you test a keyboard? (Microsoft) 33.Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years. (Boston Consulting) 34.How many ridges are there around a quarter? (Deloitte) 35.An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear? (Epic Systems) 36.How would you design an alarm clock? (Microsoft) 37.How many basketballs can you fit in this room? (Google) 38.If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner? (Amazon) 39.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) 40.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)

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Texy Apprentice

Texy

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Yeah I have been asked something similar before q6 yes what do u know - i told him see that door open there its hinges have gone bad closing mechanisms not working the way its been held open is because of a pen that's been stuck and jammed in effortless and invisible like hell khareedega? :).
That explains why you are posting on ICF during daytime. :cantstop:
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Crookbond Newbie

Crookbond

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13.You have a birthday cake and have exactly 3 slices to cut it into 8 equal pieces. How do you do it? (Blackrock)

Slice 1 - You cut the cake into half and you get 2 pieces Slice 2 - Place both the pieces obtained from previous step, keep them on top of each other and slice. You now have 4 pieces Slice 3 - Repeat Slice 2 procedure with 4 pieces on top of each other The fundamental here is 2^3 = 8 i.e. you require 3 slices to make 8 pieces, 4 to make 16 pieces and so on.

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Crookbond Newbie

Crookbond

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4.How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine? (IBM)

You can solve this using Archimedes principle. Put the elephant in a huge pool of water; the amount of water displaced is equal to the weight of the elephant.

16.Why are manhole covers round? (Google and Microsoft)

There can be many answers for this (1) Easy to roll (2) Fits in with any orientation - not the same for any other shape (3) Lesser metal to prepare the man hole cover (4) No chance to fall inside the hole But the one I think is the most appropriate answer is that for the same value for money (5) The volume of a cylinder is more than a volume of a cube (diameter/diagonal constant) - water flows much faster.

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The Outsider Newbie

The Outsider

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2.How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? (Google)
I love asking and being asked these kind of questions. This one for example could go something like:
1. Say the population of Seattle is roughly 400,000. 2. On average there are around 2 people per household. 3. So, there are around 200,000 homes in Seattle. 4. Each home has around 10 windows on average, maybe more like 8, but keeping the calculations simple. There are 2,000,000 household windows in Seattle. 5. Say, you clean 10 windows in an hour. So, you need 200,000 hours to clean all windows. 6. You charge $10/hour, so you will charge $2 million for all household windows. 7. Out of 400,000 people around 150,000 work. 8. In offices there is around 1 window for every 3 people. That's 50,000 more windows. 9. Office windows are larger and not as accessible so only 5 can be cleaned in an hour. 10. That's 10,000 more hours for $100,000. 11. There are around 200,000 cars * 5 windows per car for 1 million more windows. 12. They are smaller and 20 can be cleaned in an hour. That's $500,000 more. Estimating cleaning supplies, insurance, travel costs at around 10% overhead, I will charge roughly $3 million to clean all the windows in Seattle.
BTW, this question was asked by Google about windows in Seattle. Does it have a deeper meaning? :hmmm:
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