Five Guys Walk Into a Bar …

Posted March 1st, 2011 by Charlotte Draper No Comments »

Have you heard the one about the $5 foot-long?

Its not a joke. Its an interview question for a summer internship at Capital One, the kind of question thats supposed to test a candidates problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.

Such questions are becoming increasingly common—and bizarre—as more employers and recruiters try to detect those qualifications that cant be spelled out on even the most handsomely typeset resume.

Career counselors often tell you to prepare concise responses for conventional questions like What are your strengths, or Where do you see yourself in five years? But for the unconventional ones, like these compiled by online job community Glassdoor.com, all we can say is, expect the unexpected. And bring a pencil (or an invisible pen).

“Tell me about your life from Kindergarten onwards.” (Merrill Lynch internship)
“What is your strategy in table tennis?” (Citigroup internship in quant trading)
“Would you be okay hearing ‘no’ from seven out of ten customers?” (Enterprise Rent-A-Car management internship)
“What did you play with as a child? (Kiewit Corp. internship)
“How would you evaluate Subways $5 foot-long sub policy?” (Capital One summer analyst internship)
“If you could describe Hershey, Godiva and Dove chocolate as people, how would you describe them?” (Lubin Lawrence consulting internship)
“Sell me an invisible pen.” (Procter & Gamble internship)
“You are climbing a stair case. Each time you can either make one step or two steps. The staircase has n steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb the staircase?” (Google Inc. software-engineer internship)
Five guys, all of different ages, enter a bar and take a seat at a round table. What is the probability that they are seated in ascending order of age (clockwise or counter-clockwise)? (Susquehanna International Group assistant trader internship)
“Twenty-five racehorses, no stopwatch, five tracks. Figure out the top three fastest horses in the fewest number of races.” (Facebook Inc. summer software-engineering internship)
“Suppose you had eight identical balls. One of them is slightly heavier and you are given a balance scale. Whats the fewest number of times you have to use the scale to find the heavier ball?” (Goldman Sachs software-engineer internship)
“What is the chance that at least two people were born on the same day of the week if there are three people in the room?” (DRW Trading internship)
“How would you rate your life on a scale from 1 to 10?” (Brown & Brown Insurance internship)
“How many cocktail umbrellas are there in a given time in the United States?” (Gryphon Scientific science consulting internship)
“What is the smallest number divisible by 225 that consists of all 1s and 0s?” (Jane Street Capital trader internship)
“Estimate how many planes are there in the sky.” (Towers Watson summer internship)
“If you walk into a liquor store to count the bottles unsold, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do?” (Diageo North America marketing internship)

JY Teachers