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HOW MANY GOLF balls can you fit in a school bus? What about the number of apples eaten every day in Ireland?
Too obscure? Well, if you’re a recent graduate going for a choice spot at Google those are the questions you might get asked.
A new Irish graduate information website, mGrad, could redraw the balance a little between the big employers and wide-eyed workers going into their first important interviews.
Luke Ferriter, the website’s 26-year-old founder and director, said top firms were putting potential employees through the wringer with everything from left-field questions to psychometric tests.
He said recruitment approaches were constantly being tweaked and job hunters could expect the questions to change, but his site at least armed graduates with some insights into the common tactics big companies used to vet staff.
Ferriter said a common thread to all employers’ approaches was asking the right questions to work out how good a fit prospective staff members would for the company.
“When Google asks you how many golf balls will fit in a bus, what they really want is for you to take them through how you will go about answering that question – they are analytical questions to work out how you approach things,” he said.
“But you are never going to get asked that from an accountancy firm.”
So what do you need to know then?
While the big banks and law firms focussed on skills and experience, tech companies’ questions weighed more heavily on motivations and out-of-box thinking, according to mGrad’s applicant surveys.
This approach was exemplified in Google’s slightly cult-like emphasis on working out candidates’ level of “Googliness” (yes, they actually use that word).
Or this heavily-loaded question from the creators of the dreaded blue screen of death: “What do you not like about Microsoft?”
And this little hand grenade from the bailed-out AIB: “What is your opinion on the financial crisis in Ireland?”
Ferriter said the idea for the site came from his own experience as a UCD graduate going through the “strenuous” selection process as he hunted for jobs.
I felt like I was under prepared for going through those things … I realised that maybe other people felt the same way and I went about creating something to fill that need,” he said.
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Life is too short for Google’s bullshit
Yeah, Google’s profitable and they pay their people really well, but we don’t like that sort of success. We’d prefer everyone to earn the average industrial wage and survive on bread and water..
When we’re in government we’ll drive Google out and put the employees working on collective farms. That’ll show them.
I hope this is sarcastic. ….
Proudly Italian, it’s not sarcastic. It’s official Sinn Fein policy.
Happy Sunday.
Performance reviews every 3 months. Fcuk that shit.
That’s not treating your employee well, that’s treating them like an incompetent a$$hole.
Here here
How are regular performance reviews bad? If you’re doing your job properly, then you know that you’re always fine. And if you aren’t, then why should they keep paying you?
Interviewer: “What is your biggest weakness?”
Interviewee: “I would have to say honesty”
Interviewer: “I don’t really think that honesty is a weakness”
Interviewee: “I couldn’t really give a f*@k what you think, now when do I start?.”
F**k them.
Your hired. Lol
You’re not………
Sorry Mr. Unwieldy, you’re not hired for your glaring grammatical error, lol.
AIB advert is fcuking annoying, We’re backing brave, we all know who picks up the tab when it goes tits up.
And as everyone knows there are far more effective ways of testing analytical thinking than asking how many apples are eaten in Ireland or how many lightbulbs are in Australia. Most forward thinking companies ditched this kind of useless archaic way of questioning candidates a long time ago.
The AIB backing brave ad campaign has to be the biggest PR disaster ever on social media – they get slated on Facebook and comments are blocked on YouTube
I was once asked ” How many light bulbs were there in Australia?” It kinda caught me off guard but I explained how I’d work it out and they were very happy, they said most just pulled a figure out of the sky.
Watt.
Jim, my stomach hertz from all the laughing
This info is out of date. Google announced recently that they no longer ask such stupid questions.
If someone asked me how many golf balls would fit in a plane at an interview I would stand up and walk out, maybe they need that rubbish to fluff out grad interviews instead of discussing experience, who knows. No experienced hire needs their time wasted like that. I understand the concept of what they are trying to do around determining problem solving skills but you can ask other more sensible questions for the same results. I’ve also heard you could have to do as many as 7 interviews for google! What utter time wasting to ask someone to come back that many times.
You have no hope!
Yes, at least seven.
Hope for what precisely?
i,ll have to google that sir
No wonder there’s so many fuktards in the workplace these days answering bullsheet questions like that, anybody worth giving a job too would tell them to go fuk themselves.
It’s no worse than what some ask you. Hefty technical assignment to do (a few hours of work) and then you’re lucky if you even here from them again. It’s almost like free labour. Had same experience with Daft
23 squared… really? I didn’t think that would be considered difficult.
You must be terrible at communications skills to say that.
Or you’re just joking.
Knowing how to do basic multiplication doesn’t make someone “bad at communications skills”
23*10=230
230*2=460
23*3=69
69+460=529 (=23 squared)
Would have swiped out my google phone and opened the calculator and worked it out. That’s using what tools are available to me to solve a problem (“,) haha
That’s probably the right answer Clive, using your resources to find out quickly. Can’t see how that would be held against anyone.
That was how much a sap are you,ended up here sap
Hahaha brilliant, at least you owned up
dermot ,grow a pair. life,s too short.
Horrible place to work.
So last year… Or even the year before that.
They are decent interview questions though. Being able to answer questions like these test your analytical skills and put you on the spot.
I work for Google. …I got hired over the phone ….because I am awesome.
No, Patrick, they hired you because of your background in DoubleClick.
Awesome? Far from it.
How much a sap ar
I Googled the question, and got the answer, and they tell you how to get the answer!
Incorrect….It is an incredible place to work.
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