Job interview Source: Getty Images / Alamy Credit: METRO/Myles Goode
Please, take a seat and relive your nightmare (Picture: Getty Images/Alamy/METRO/Myles Goode)

Job interviews are horrible – this is a fact.

But the worst most of us have to answer is the predictable: ‘What do you consider to be your biggest weakness?’

(TIP: Just tell them you are too much of a perfectionist – works every time and they definitely won’t have heard it before).

Of course, you will have to up your game if you ever hope to get a job in one of the top 50 companies in America – which includes Facebook, Google and Apple – because interviewees have been asked some pretty odd questions.

Business Insider sifted through questions faced by applicants who submitted them to Glassdoor, and some were fairly hard to answer.

PIC BY DAN ROWLANDS/MERCURY PRESS (PICTURED: JOANNE MURPHY, 39, WITH THE DINNER SET SHE ORDERED FROM TESCO) A couple were left with a mountain of cardboard in their living room after a supermarket delivered their new dinner set in 48 SEPARATE boxes. Joanne and Billy Murphy were stunned when each plate, bowl and mug in the 24-piece set they ordered online from Tesco showed up in their own individual boxes, which were then inside even bigger boxes. Already unimpressed at having waited 14 days for the goods to arrive, Joanna took to social media to vent her fury as despite the extreme packaging, five items still broke during delivery. The boxes took up so much space that the family, from Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, couldn't see the living room floor once the items were unwrapped. SEE MERCURY COPY Family left buried in cardboard after Tesco deliver dinner set in 48 separate boxes

One person interviewing for a product manager position at Google was asked: ‘Choose a city and estimate how many piano tuners operate a business there.’

Another going for an online-sales-operations job at Facebook was faced with: ‘How much do you charge to wash every window in Seattle?’

Apple asked someone hoping to become a global-supply-manager: ‘How many children are born every day?’

(The answer is this one is about 361,000).

Stressed Hispanic father feeding baby
Phone interviews – better or worse? (Picture: File)

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Other questions were designed to make the applicant to really examine themselves.

‘What is your favourite colour?’ was asked of one person interviewing for an assistant manager position at Hess.

Google asked an associate-account-strategist hopeful: ‘If you could be remembered for one sentence, what would it be?’

Boeing asked a potential engineer: ‘What do you think of lava lamps? And Dilbert?’

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Of course some questions just sound like the sort of thing you would hear on a first date.

‘Tell me a story,’ was heard by one applicant at Celgene.

Whereas Microsoft asked ‘If you had a choice between two superpowers — being invisible or flying — which would you choose?’ for a high-level product-lead/evangelist position.

 

Have you been asked any bizarre questions in an interview? Tell us at hey@metro.co.uk and we will print them here.