4 Out of the Box Interview Questions You’ll Love Asking

4 Out of the Box Interview Questions You’ll Love Asking

Interviews can feel mundane. Candidates are asked the same questions over and over again, which means their answers are often canned. As an employer, it’s difficult to get a realistic idea of who you’re interviewing with answers that are so rehearsed.

To break the mold, many companies are starting to shift to out of the box interview questions. Here are four of our favorite questions asked by large corporations.

1. What songs best describe your work style?

This is asked by Dell. Instead of asking outright about how a person would define her work style, drill down and ask for song titles.

Song titles get people thinking on their toes. It also offers a broader spectrum for an answer. For example, if a person is applying for a position in customer service, she might choose Diana Ross’s song, “Respect” and “Humble and Kind” by Tim McGraw as her songs.

2. What do you think about when you are alone in your car?

This question is asked by Gallup. It encourages people to reveal how their mind works when they’re not having to be “on” for work.

Asking this question allows the person to talk about another side to their personality you might not have seen before. For example, the person might be highly involved in coaching his son’s pee-wee football team. While driving, he might think about coaching ideas. Without asking, you wouldn’t have learned this about the candidate.

3. In a perfect world, how would people communicate?

This is asked by Novell and is quite telling about how well the interviewee relays his or her ideas.

Some people will say in-person is ideal because it’s the full package of audio and visual communication. Dig a little deeper to find out the best alternative too. Try to determine if the person’s communication style will match well with how your team communicates. For example, if the person is averse to anything other than a phone call, she might not be a good fit if you use an online scheduling app to manage your team.

4. Pick two celebrities to be your parents.

This is asked at Urban Outfitters and can reveal a lot about the person’s life outside of work.

For example, if the person chose Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as her parents, she might like to travel the world and get involved in charity work. If the candidate chose Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, she might appreciate having a good sense of humor.

What’s Your Favorite?

There are plenty of strange interview questions floating around out there. What’s your favorite? What do you think helps get to know your candidate the best? Tell us in the comments.

Author Profile Jon Forknell is the Vice President and General Manager of Atlas Business Solutions, Inc., a software marketing company specializing in employee scheduling software, including ScheduleBase employee scheduling software, and other business software solutions. In the past, Jon has been recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Atlas Business Solutions was named as one of Software Magazine’s Top 500 Software Companies in 2004 through 2007 and again in 2010, 2013 and 2014.