25 Oddball Interview Questions

TechFlash reports: Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft are known for their tough—some would say down right perplexing—job interview questions. For example, we had a friend who was asked during an Amazon.com job interview earlier this year to calculate the weight of a Boeing 747. The answer isn't quite as important as the thought process.

Now, Glassdoor.com—the folks who earlier this month released a list of the best and worst CEOs—has compiled 25 "oddball" interview questions of the year. The Sausalito company, which is backed by Zillow.com's Rich Barton, put together the list from more than 14,000 interview questions that job candidates submitted on the site.

Of course, you will find some real curveballs from Microsoft ("How would you move Mt. Fuji?") and Amazon.com ("Given a dictionary of words, how do you calculate the anagrams for a new word?") Bellevue-based Expedia also makes the list with this question: "How would you sell me eggnog in Florida in the summer?"

Keep reading for the full list, and let us know how you'd answer some of the tougher questions. Speaking of which, Glassdoor found from its survey that tech job interviews were harder than other job interviews and that the candidates had a slightly less favorable experience during the process.

1. What was your best McGuyver moment?—Schlumberger Junior Field Engineer

2. How many tennis balls are in this room and why? —Yahoo Customer Service Rep

3. If you were a brick in a wall, which brick would you be and why? —Nestle USA Procurement Intern

4. How would you move Mount Fuji? —Microsoft Software Development Engineer in Test

5. If two cars are traveling in a two-lap race on a track of any length, one going 60 mph and the other going 30mph, how fast will the slower car have to go to finish at the same time? —Morgan Stanley Trader

6. Are your parents disappointed with your career aspirations? —Fisher Investments Client Service Associate

7. Tell me how you would determine how many house painters there are in the United States. —Acquity Group Business Analyst

8. What should it cost to rent Central Park for commercial purposes? —Bain & Co Business Analyst

9. If I put you in a sealed room with a phone that had no dial tone, how would you fix it? —Apple Software Engineer

10. If you could be any animal, what would you be and why? —Pacific Sunwear Sales Associate

11. How many hair salons are there in Japan? —Boston Consulting Associate

12. If both a taxi and a limo were priced the exact same, which one would you choose? —Best Buy Customer Service

13. How to measure nine minutes using only a four-minute and seven-minute hourglass? —Bank of America Quantitative Developer

14. What are five uncommon uses of a brick, not including building, layering, or a paperweight? — Kaplan Higher Education Data Analyst

15. What is the probability of throwing 11 and over with two dices? —American Airlines Financial Analyst

16. What is your favorite food? —Apple Store Manager

17. Say you are dead. What do you think your eulogy would say about you? —Nationwide Product Manager

18. Given a dictionary of words, how do you calculate the anagrams for a new word? —Amazon Software Development Engineer

19. How many lightbulbs are in this building? —Monitor Group Entry Interview

20. Given a square grid of numbers, considering all the numbers at the boundary as one layer and numbers just inside as another layer and so on, how would you rotate each of the layers of the numbers by a given amount? —Microsoft Engineer

21. How would you sell me eggnog in Florida in the summer? —Expedia Market Manager

22. Develop an algorithm for finding the shortest distance between two words in a document. After the phone interview is over, take a few hours to develop a working example in C++ and send it to the manager? —Google Software Engineer

23. Given a fleet of 50 trucks, each with a full fuel tank and a range of 100 miles, how far can you deliver a payload? You can transfer the payload from truck to truck, and you can transfer fuel from truck to truck. Extend your answer for n trucks? —Palantir Technologies Business Development Engineer

24. You are in a room with three switches which correspond to three bulbs in another room and you don't know which switch corresponds to which bulb. You can only enter the room with the bulbs once. You can NOT use any external equipment (power supplies, resistors, etc.). How do you find out which bulb corresponds to which switch? —Goldman Sachs X-Div/Back Office

25. If you saw someone steal a quarter. Would you report it? —Amazon Shipping Manifest Clerk

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John Cook is executive editor of the Puget Sound Business Journal's TechFlash blog.