Tricky questions top employers ask

The Huffington Post listed 15 ridiculously hard job interview questions from top employers such as Google and Goldman Sachs.

The questions were selected from 80,000 interview questions on Glassdoor.com, a U.S. information website for jobseekers.

See how you get on with the questions below.


1. If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out? (Goldman Sachs – Analyst position)

2. What is the philosophy of Martial Arts? (Aflac – Sales associate position)

3. Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years. (Boston Consulting – Consultant position)

4. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are. (Capital One – Operations analyst position)

5. How many basketballs can you fit in this room? (Google – People analyst position)

6. Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest three horses. In each race, only five horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required? (Bloomberg LP Financial – Software developer position)

7. Given the numbers one to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make (Facebook – Software engineer position)

8. An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents, how much is a pear? (Epic Systems – Project manager position)

9. There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly? (Apple – Software QA engineer position)

10. How many traffic lights in Manhattan? (Argus Information & Advisory Services – Analyst position)

11. What do wood and alcohol have in common? (Guardsmark – Staff writer position)

12. Why do you think only a small percentage of the population makes over $150K? (New York Life – Sales agent position)

13. How many bottles of beer are drunk in the city over the week? (Nielsen Company – Research analyst position)

14. How are M&M’s made? (U.S. Bank – Leadership program development position)

15. What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle? (Volkswagen – Business analyst position)


(wylee@heraldcorp.com)