In the thick of a job interview, you may find yourself fielding any number of possible questions. These may range from the standard (“How much experience do you have in this industry?”) to the tricky (“What is your greatest weakness?”), and even, in rarer situations, the blatantly inappropriate (“Are you planning to take time off to have kids?”).

You may also find yourself cruising along in relative comfort when suddenly the interviewer throws you a wild curve ball:

“If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?”

“Are you exhaling warm air?”

Your reflexive reaction to questions like these is probably: “What the heck does THAT have to do with the job?!” While some employers who pose these questions may genuinely be out in left field, the majority of off-the-wall, “unexpected” questions are strategic and deliberate. Their purpose is twofold: to test some specific ability or trait the employer is looking for, and to gauge how good you are at thinking on your feet.

The website www.glassdoor.com recently published a blog devoted to some of the more oddball questions asked during real-life job interviews. I present some of their specimens in the following excerpted list, which I encourage readers to mull over till next week. That’s when I’ll delve into the questions behind the questions and, just for fun, share how I might respond to a select few if they ever cropped up in an interview. (Though chances are you wouldn’t get these exact questions in your own interview, since the whole point of an unexpected question is to catch you off guard.)

1. “If you could be a superhero, what superpower would you possess?”
2. “Room, desk and car -- which do you clean first?”
3. “If you could be our #1 employee but have all your coworkers dislike you, or our #15 employee and have all your coworkers like you, which would you choose?”
4. “How would you cure world hunger?”
5. “How would you get an elephant into a refrigerator?”
6. “Name 5 uses of a stapler without staple pins.”
7. “How many different ways can you get water from a lake at the foot of a mountain, up to the top of the mountain?”
8. “You’re in a rowboat in a large tank filled with water. You have an anchor on board, which you throw overboard. Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?”
9. “You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?”
10. “Pepsi or Coke?”
11. “Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?”
12. “How do you feel about those jokers in Ottawa?”

      THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: “Nature gave us one tongue and two ears so we could hear twice as much as we speak.” (Epictetus, Greek philosopher, AD 55 – AD 135)