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In my career as a headhunter, I have conducted approx 2,500 job interviews myself and assisted to hundreds my clients led with my candidates. Since 2001, I have learned a lot from my clients on clever questioning that brings out the best of the candidates. But I have also heard many stupid interview questions.<\/p>\n
What is the reason stupid interview questions are asked after all? And how should you answer them?<\/p>\n
In my opinion, there are two reasons why interviewers ask stupid questions during the job interview:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Because the interviewer really does not know it better\u00a0or<\/li>\n
- Because the interviewer is\u00a0insecure<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Maybe in the end, both come back to the insecurity thing anyway: maybe you are not the only one who is stressed. Or inexperienced regarding job interviews. I remember very well a situation at the beginning of my career when I had a search assignment and presented my candidates to the CFO saying “I suggest you interview my three candidates and then we discuss”.<\/em>\u00a0He answered “right, but how should I do that? What exactly should I say?”.<\/em><\/p>\n
Stupid questions can be as obvious as “how many paper clips fit into this room?”<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0“if you were an animal, which one and why?”<\/em> They can be\u00a0more subtle such as “where do you see yourself in 5 years?”, “what is your biggest weakness?”<\/em> or “how do your colleagues\/\u00a0friends\/ cashier at your local grocery store\u00a0describe you?”<\/em>. I mean, hey, who would really give true answer?\u00a0In my entire career, I have never heard anyone saying “Oh right, there is one more thing you should know about me: I am a notorious liar, I hate my job and I love gossiping. On top of that, I am far\u00a0below average\u00a0compared to my peers. I would actually never hire myself.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
What is the purpose of these “stupid” questions?<\/p>\n
Does the interviewer have the right answer\u00a0how many paper clips fit into the\u00a0conference room? Will you be disqualified if your answer is 10% away from the truth? Does s\/he really expect to\u00a0talk about your dark side, I mean, about the REALLY\u00a0bad parts\u00a0of your character?<\/p>\n
Of course not. In most cases they just want to see how you react.<\/p>\n
Before saying anything, ask yourself\u00a0“what is the purpose of this question?”<\/em>. In many\u00a0cases, it is something different than what the interviewer said.<\/p>\n
Let’s translate interview language to English. Here come some examples:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The question “What is your biggest weakness?”<\/em>\u00a0means in reality “I know it already: You talk far too much. However, I wonder if you have a realistic perception yourself, so fire away!”<\/em><\/li>\n
- “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”<\/em> means “Of course no one knows. Take Corona: Would you have answered back in 2015 “Easy. Five years from now, the world we know will have ceased to exist and 4 billion people will be confined in their home”? If you had said that, nobody would have hired you but declared you are a weirdo. In times like these, we do not even know where we are in 6 months. Confined again? Maybe you will have won in the lottery or extra-terrestrials have taken over the world. In my opinion, this question means “Nobody knows. Let’s see if you are naive and over-ambitious or down-to-earth and realistic.”\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n
- “Imagine you are standing in front of a house on fire. On the second floor is a pregnant woman, on the third one your mother in law and on the fourth one your boss. Who do you save first?”<\/em> can mean either\u00a0“I am enjoying this tremendously and really think you are good. Here comes the final test”<\/em> or it means\u00a0“I just lost my mind and will jump\u00a0out of the window as soon as this interview is over.”<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
So what is the best reaction to this kind of answer?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nI do not know exactly what the purpose of the question is. Here are some ideas:<\/p>\n
- \n
- “Where do you want to be in 5 years?”<\/em> the best answer may be “hopefully still here, having made an impact to the company and having grown myself”<\/em><\/li>\n
- On the color\/ animal: “I always wanted to be a hamster because 1, 2 and 3<\/em> (name the three most important characteristics that are critical for the job)”.<\/li>\n
- On the paper clip\/ burning house or any other stupid thing: laugh as much as you can! What a stupid interview question, really!?!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Conclusion:<\/strong><\/p>\n
There is a saying that goes “There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers”<\/em>. I do not agree: there are extremely silly questions, especially in job interviews. If you want to know how to answer them, first ask yourself “why this question?”<\/em> and then reply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In my career as a headhunter, I have conducted approx 2,500 job interviews myself and assisted to hundreds my clients led with my candidates. Since 2001, I have learned a lot from my clients on clever questioning that brings out the best of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":13386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[234],"tags":[235],"class_list":["post-13322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-you-are-a-candidate-fr","tag-interview-fr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apolloexecutive.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- On the color\/ animal: “I always wanted to be a hamster because 1, 2 and 3<\/em> (name the three most important characteristics that are critical for the job)”.<\/li>\n
- “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”<\/em> means “Of course no one knows. Take Corona: Would you have answered back in 2015 “Easy. Five years from now, the world we know will have ceased to exist and 4 billion people will be confined in their home”? If you had said that, nobody would have hired you but declared you are a weirdo. In times like these, we do not even know where we are in 6 months. Confined again? Maybe you will have won in the lottery or extra-terrestrials have taken over the world. In my opinion, this question means “Nobody knows. Let’s see if you are naive and over-ambitious or down-to-earth and realistic.”\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n
- The question “What is your biggest weakness?”<\/em>\u00a0means in reality “I know it already: You talk far too much. However, I wonder if you have a realistic perception yourself, so fire away!”<\/em><\/li>\n