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» Interview Brainteasers
You've heard of those brain teaser questions that may well
come between you and a job someday. No matter how much you
may prepare yourself for a job interview, you may never be
completely ready when that interviewer asks you why manhole
covers are round. And since that question has been asked so
often, it's now considered one of the easy ones! Microsoft
is partly to blame.
Ever since the Seattle-based software giant
made news a few years ago for asking applicants questions like "How
many golfballs does it take to fill a 747?", more and
more companies have been adding their own mindbenders to
the interview mix - and it's not just at software behemoths
like Microsoft, but also at consulting firms and investment
banks like Goldman Sachs and Smith Barney. Don't feel prepared
just because you've got a bulletproof resume and have thoroughly
researched the company you're interviewing for. Be ready
for something unorthodox to pop up out of the blue.
It's how
you answer, not what you answer
It's not a matter of answering the question "correctly" --
in many cases there is no correct answer. The company wants
to know how you think. They are interested in how and why
you arrive at your answer. According to one contractor who
was writing anonymously on a website devoted to Microsoft
job interviews, the interviewer "wants to know what
you're like, not what you think you should be like. While
it might seem obvious that authenticity is vital, many people
still get the misguided impression that there is a character
type they must reflect."
Interview brain teasers range widely in difficulty. Some
of them do have actual answers. One example is,"Calculate
the number of degrees between the hour and minute hands of
an analog clock that reads 3:15." Hint: the answer is
not zero. Others exist primarily to see how creatively and
elegantly you can reason under pressure -- for example, "How
many gas stations are there in the United States?" While
these may involve some math, it's fairly simple stuff. The
key is to show how flexible your mind is when figuring these
things out.
Take the manhole cover question, one of the easier
brain teasers out there. Why are they round? Don't panic.
Consider
the question from different angles. You might answer that
manhole covers are round because it makes them easier for
one person to move them around by rolling them on one side.
They might be round because if the manholes were, say, square
-- or for that matter, any shape other than a circle -- they
could easily drop through the hole. This is the orthodox "right" answer
to the manhole question. Another popular answer to this is
that the round covers don't need to be rotated to fit over
the hole they're covering, as square ones would.
Or consider
this: What's the size of the market for disposable diapers
in China? Start big and take this brain teaser one
mathematical step at a time. Estimate how many people live
in China and pick a percentage of that number that would
represent Chinese people of child-bearing age. Divide that
number in half to get the number of Chinese women of childbearing
age. Assume a percentage of those women have children, a
fraction of whom are under two years old. Recall that on
average, Chinese families tend to have only one child. Plug
in the numbers and do the math.
The number may not be the
precise answer, but the logic you use to get it shows the
interviewer that you know how
to think. The trick is to use big, round numbers that are
easy to add, subtract, multiply and divide on the fly. By
showing the interviewer that you can think on your feet,
you'll begin to demonstrate that you'll be a solid problem-solver
as an employee.
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