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Job-interview puzzles
What is the sense for an interviewer to ask about sheep?
You come in for a job interview, prepared to speak about your education, work experience, even about your weaknesses. But suddenly you are asked a question or a puzzle, not even related to the matter, and you do not know what to do. Should you smile? Or joke? Answer in all seriousness – you might be being analyzed. How to solve this tricky task with dignity?
Hens, pianos and other stuff
Do not tell me about your previous job, you would better say, how many eggs a hen lays daily, when a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half? More and more companies begin asking job seekers such questions and believe that this way of finding out about a person is more effective than traditional conversation. There is nothing strange in this tendency. Tricky questions and puzzles are a good method to examine many qualities, that are more important for an employer, than boring facts of biography, for example, liveliness of mind, logic, creative and analytical abilities. These are the characteristics that determine an ability of a person to grasp information, act and make decisions.
There are many types of tasks given to job seekers during job interviews, starting with laconic questions and ending with real problems solving which takes a lot of time.
Asking short-spoken questions is a perfect opportunity to check the speed of response:
“How do you think, how many piano tuners are there in the world?” – the candidate is asked, and all the scale of emotions can be seen on his face. At first he is just shocked, then he is embarrassed and tries to think what to do, after this he makes vain attempts to calculate, how many pianos are there in the world… This reaction is not less important for a recruiter than a candidate’s story about his skills: how he reacts to surprises, how he behaves in unexpected situations, how quickly he finds the right word to say, how inventive he is.
Here is a difficult task that can discover a real genius of analytics or an inventor: “An egg should be boiled for 15 minutes. You have two sand-glasses. One sand-glass is for 11 minutes, the other one is for 7 minutes. What would you do not to overboil the egg?”
Be prepared
Going to a job interview, you should remember that you can be asked such a question. Puzzles are more expected in foreign companies, however, you never know where you will face similar tasks. One candidate for a position of a chief buyer in major supermarket chains was given a task: “Two sheep are grazing on a round field within a radius of 20 metres. One sheep is gentle and compliant, and the other one is aggressive and wicked. It was decided to bind the wicked sheep to a peg so that it will not be able to offend the good one. The peg is hammered at the edge of the field. How long should the rope be, so that the sheep will have equal parts of the field?”
The job seeker did not want to be bothered with calculations, so he measured the rope length in favour of the weak sheep, and explained: “It will not walk along the edge of the field because of the danger to meet the wicked sheep, so if the field is divided equally, the good sheep’s pride will be hurt”.
How are mathematical calculations and especially sheep related to the duties of a chief buyer? But the HR manager was pleased with the answer and hired the man, having rated highly his quick wit.
Take it easy
The common mistake of job seekers is in too serious approach to the tasks, while many of the questions require easy perception. It is necessary to invent an original solution, because sometimes there is no right answer at all. “How do you think, how many balls for ping-pong Boeing 747 can contain?” A candidate starts to frown while counting the volume of a ball, the volume of a plane, he risks to seem boring and unoriginal. Much worse is to fall into a stupor, to show stress of to become frightened. One female candidate was given a task suddenly during an interview; she kept silent for a while, stood up and said: “I’d better go…” Nobody tried to hold her.
The speed of making decisions
The main rule of answering short questions is not to start thinking seriously, but to answer the first thing that occurs to you. This will help you to show your quickness of wit and reaction.
To solve tasks is more difficult, on the contrary, do not hurry with the answer. Sometimes there is one answer on the surface, but you should use logic and find another one. An example is the following task: “Trains leave two stations with an interval of 24 hours and go towards each other. Every train reaches the other station in 10 days. How many trains coming from the opposite direction will the operator of each train see?” Most candidates blurt out “10”, while the right answer is 21. It just takes time to think.
Think aloud!
You can be asked by an interviewer to do this, but even if he does not, try to relax and to solve the task aloud. Do not be afraid to demonstrate your thoughts, since the answer can look trivial, while the logic that brought to the answer is brilliant. There can be another case: the answer is not right, but the argumentation is interesting. An interviewer can not ask “Why?” Moreover, thinking aloud can take nervousness away and structure your thoughts.
By the way, when you are asked a not very serious question or a puzzle, do not try to seem cleverer than you are. Behave as usual, even if you know that they want to estimate you.
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