Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Fun Interview and Essay Questions

From Google:
Q: "You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"

Q: "Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew."



From Steve Jobs, CEO and founder of Apple
Q: "Have you ever tried LSD?" 

From the University of Chicago, college application essay question:
The Cartesian coordinate system is a popular method of representing real numbers and is the bane of eighth graders everywhere. Since its introduction by Descartes in 1637, this means of visually characterizing mathematical values has swept the globe, earning a significant role in branches of mathematics such as algebra, geometry, and calculus. Describe yourself as a point or series of points on this axial arrangement. If you are a function, what are you? In which quadrants do you lie? Are x and y enough for you, or do you warrant some love from the z-axis? Be sure to include your domain, range, derivative, and asymptotes, should any apply. Your possibilities are positively and negatively unbounded.

(Inspired by Joshua Nalven, a graduate of West Orange High School, West Orange, NJ (2006–2007))


An Interview at Microsoft (not experienced by Wandrew)
I walked into my first technical interview at Microsoft, and before I could say anything, the woman says, "You're in an 8x8 stone corridor." I blink and sit down.

Interviewer: "The prince of darkness appears before you."
Me: "You mean, like, the devil?"
Interviewer: "Any prince of darkness will do."
Me: "Ok."
Interviewer: "What do you do?"
Me: "Can I run?"
Interviewer: "Do you want to run?"
Me: "Hmm, I guess not Do I have a weapon?"
Interviewer: "What kind of weapon do you want?"
Me: "Um, something with range?"
Interviewer: "Like what?"
Me: "Uh, a crossbow?"
Interviewer: "What kind of ammo do you have?"
Me: "Ice arrows?"
Interviewer: "Why?"
Me: (floundering) "Because the prince of darkness is a creature made of fire???"
Interviewer: "Fine, so what do you do next?"
Me: "I shoot him?"
Interviewer: "No, what do you do?"
Me: (blank stare) 
Interviewer: "You WASTE him! YOU FUCKING WASTE the PRINCE OF DARKNESS!!"
Me: (Me completely freaked out and off my game thinking, Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into).

She then tells me that she asks that question for two reasons. 1) Because she wants to know if the candidate is a gamer and 2) because she wants her question to show up on some website. I hate to accommodate her, but this is definitely the weirdest interview question I've ever heard of.



From Wieden Kennedy, to apply for a job with no description:
Write something for us. The content is up to you, but here’s our guideline for format: 

a pdf document, 20 pages or less, formatted 11×17 landscape, no larger than
6MB. It will be viewed on screen and not printed, so design with this in mind.

From Cooper Union School of Architecture
Write a play featuring the following shapes as characters: Triangle, Square, and Circle

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