From the Reporters
Carole Matthews

Weird and Wacky Interview Answers

 

Human resource professionals get them all of the time. The prospective employee who answers a question with something so off the wall that it either entices the interviewer to learn more about the person sitting in front of them, or, more frequently, causes the interviewer to show the candidate the door.

That's the topic of a recent article by Kathy Gurchiek, an associate editor at HR News. The article, "Interview answers keep getting weirder, wackier," cites some comments HR professionals offered on the Society for Resource Management's HR Talk Bulletin Board.

Here are a just a few of the crazy answers Gurchiek features in her piece:

  • A woman was asked where she saw herself in five years. Her response, as Gurchiek notes: " 'I only plan to be here until I get my gospel singing career off the ground," before bursting into song because she said, 'God wanted her to sing for us,' recalled a SHRM member."

  • When another SHRM member asked a candidate how she juggled tasks, the candidate's response was, "When I get too busy, I just sloooooow down."

  • "I was homecoming queen my senior year of high school," was the response one 30-something interviewee gave a SHRM member when she was asked to cite a major accomplishment.

And there are dozens more SHRM members offered on the bulletin board that weren't mentioned in the article.

Have you ever received a crazy answer to one of your interview questions? Let us know by sharing them here.