These days, it seems like businesses are spending more time making sure they have the right employee for the job before making the hiring decision.  One of the ways some companies do this is by asking questions designed to make you think.

And, these questions aren't your typical "is it okay to give your friends free food" or "is it okay to borrow money from the cash register"

These questions are open ended and made to make you use critical thinking skills.

Glassdoor recently put out their list of the "toughest" interview questions from the last year.

  1. “What on your CV is the closest thing to a lie?” – Marketing and Communications Employee, The Phoenix Partnership
  2. “What am I thinking right now?” – Regional Director, TES Global
  3. “How would your enemy describe you?” – Advertising Sales Grad Scheme, Condé Nast
  4. “If you had a friend who was great for a job and an identical person who was just as good, but your friend earned you £2,000 less, who would you give the job to?” – Associate Recruitment Consultant, Hays plc
  5. “What’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done?” – Graduate Consultant, PageGroup
  6. “You are stranded on the moon with a group of other astronauts and you need to travel 200 miles back to base, here is a list of 15 items salvaged from the wreckage of the spacecraft you were travelling in. List them in order of importance.” – Sales Employee, Turnstone Sales
  7. “If your best friend was here what advice would he give you?” – CCP, American Express
  8. “Describe your biggest weakness. Then describe another.” – Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Palantir Technologies
  9. “How do you cope with repetition?” – Product Specialist, Tesla Motors
  10. “How would you describe cloud computing to a 7-year-old?” – Graduate Scheme, Microsoft
  11. “There are three people, each with different salaries, and they want to find the average of them without telling any of the other two their salary. How do they do it?” – Technical Delivery Graduate, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence
  12. “Who is your hero, and why?” – Product Quality Employee, GE
  13. “What’s your the biggest regret managing people so far?” – Area Director, Regus
  14. “What would you ask the CEO if you met him one day?” – Performance Analyst, British Airways
  15. “You have 50 red and 50 blue objects. Split these however you like between two containers to give the minimum/maximum probability of drawing one of the colors” – Operations Analyst, Clearwater Analytics
  16. “What does social justice mean to you?” – Content Marketing Manager, ThoughtWorks
  17. “What is your coping mechanism when you have a bad day?” – Consultant, Switch Consulting
  18. “Are you a nice guy?” – Product Manager, Badoo
  19. “Provide an estimate for the number of goals in the Premier League.” – Management Accountant, VAX
  20. “Tell me about your childhood” – Learning and Development Employee, Next

Just for the heck of it, I tried to answer some of these questions.  And, honestly, a few of them made my head hurt.

More From 92 Moose