The 20 Toughest Job Interview Questions Heard At Apple, Google, Twitter, And Others
There’s nothing worse than being caught off guard during a job interview.
Luckily, with the help of Glassdoor’s Interview Questions & Reviews section, you can experience the strangest possible interview questions of the last year — all from the safety of your chair.
This year’s weirdest questions come courtesy of Apple, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon, and a few others.
Trust us, none of these questions would be a breeze to answer.
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“If you were given a box of pencils, list 10 things you could do with them that are not their traditional use.”
Job: Google Administrative Assistant
“How would you solve problems if you were from Mars?”
Job: Senior Recruiting Manager at Amazon
“What’s the most creative way you can break a clock?”
Job: Apple Intern
“If you were a street sign, what would you be?”
Job: Sales Associate at Pacific Sunwear
“A disc is spinning on a spindle, and you don’t know which way. You are given a set of pins. Describe how you would use them to determine which way the disc is spinning.”
Job: Software Development Engineer at Microsoft
“There are infinite black and white dots on a plane. Prove that the distance between one black dot and one white dot is one unit.”
Job: Technology Analyst at Goldman Sachs
“You have a bag of with “N” number of strings. At random, you pull out a string’s end. You pull out another string end and you tie the two together. You repeat this until there are no loose ends left to pull out of the bag. What is the expected number of loops?”
Job: Business Operations Intern at Facebook
“Think of a product or service that no one has ever thought of before, one that you think would be revolutionary for your university. How would you market it?”
Job: Summer Marketing Analyst at JP Morgan Chase
“You want to design a phone for deaf people — how do you do it?”
Job: Product Manager at Google
“Why should we not hire you?”
Job: Recruiter at Twitter
“How would you design an elevator?”
Job: Intern at Microsoft
“A dwarf-killing giant lines up 10 dwarfs from shortest to tallest. Each dwarf can see all the shortest dwarfs in front of him, but cannot see the dwarfs behind himself. The giant randomly puts a white or black hat on each dwarf. No dwarf can see their own hat. The giant tells all the dwarfs that he will ask each dwarf, starting with the tallest, for the color of his hat. If the dwarf answers incorrectly, the giant will kill the dwarf. Each dwarf can hear the previous answers, but cannot hear when a dwarf is killed. The dwarves are given an opportunity to collude before the hats are distributed. What strategy should be used to kill the fewest dwarfs, and what is the minimum number of dwarfs that can be saved with this strategy?”
Job: QA Automation Engineer at BitTorrent
“Name as many Microsoft products as you can.”
Job: Associate Consultant at Microsoft
“Is this binary tree a mirror of itself?”
Job: Senior Software Engineer at Twitter
“How do you cut a circular cake into eight equal pieces?”
“How much does a Boeing 707 weigh?”
Job: Operations Analyst at Goldman Sachs
“How would you describe a dynamometer to an 8-year-old child?”
Job: Engineering Technician at Tesla Motors
“Do you believe in a higher power?”
“How do you compute the collision of two moving spheres? Give me both the mathematical equations for the solution as well as an algorithmic implementation.”
Job: Senior Software Engineer at Electronic Arts
“How do you feel about working in extreme weather conditions all year round?”
Job: Product Tester at MTD Products
Those questions were tough. But be careful how you respond…
Here are the 23 ways to ruin your chances during a job interview
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