Interviews

It's been a busy time for me at work, even with things in my personal life falling apart. I was just promoted and the last month has been quite the adventure. Before I got the job, I had two separate interviews with upper management and human resources. Since I got the job, I guess I did pretty decent in the interviews.

Now the tables have turned. As a supervisor, one of my responsibilities is to interview applicants for our call center representatives. Last week I did one of these interviews. Let's just say the applicant did not get the job.

Banker interviews are not the only interviews I need to give. My former boss and I are both in the process of hiring team leads (someone to do the job I was doing). When the job posted, we received some duplicate applications and we each got a few unique resumes sent in. I had 25 people apply and he had about 5 more that were not copied to my posting. If we do the math (and why not? It's fun!), that's 30 people we need to narrow down to 2.

The pair of us have a set of interview questions ready for the hour slots of time (we're giving out about 10 interviews), but we have started to joke around about questions we'd like to ask. We are a bit random and we're having fun with this process. The questions we are coming up with have NOTHING to do with the job and will not actually be in the interview, but I thought I could maybe share our fake interview here:

1. Which constellation in the night sky do you identify with the most? Give me a synopsis of the mythology of that constellation, the correct coordinates in the sky, and the reason why you have chosen that constellation.


2. What do you think of the color yellow?


3. My team lead needs to have the skills to tell me stories, complete with hand gestures. Go.


4. What is your opinion about clowns? Do you hold the same opinion about clown shoes?


5. Which member of The Beatles was your favorite? Why?


6. Can you build an ark if there was a flood? Would it float?


7. Follow up to the ark question. Which ten species would you NOT take in pairs on your ark?


8. What is the cure for cancer?


9. Without the aid of a calculator or paper & pencil, what is the square root of 1,234,567,789?


10. Tell me your thoughts about sprinklers.


11. If you had a choice between being able to fly and being invisible, which would you pick?


12. What do you think about hats?


13. Here's a scenario. Aliens have just invaded the planet and are colonizing in Minnesota (because they are crazy - you know aliens, never doing enough research about weather patterns). They have decided to not kill all humans and earth creatures and look for employment. How would you coach an alien in selling banking products?


14. Do you participate in Internet forwards? Do you believe that sending the email actually gives you good karma?


15. Have you ever dreamed of monkeys ruling the world? If so, please describe the dream in detail. Be specific about the differences if monkeys were creating policy.


The questions are meant to be completely random and trip up an interviewee. If only I could actually ask them...