Here are some of the weirdest questions students have been asked during a job interview

‘How many wheels are there in Barcelona?’

3 years ago

No one likes the stressful and daunting process of securing a job as a student: You spend hours finding job openings, exaggerating your work experience, and submitting your application only to be ruthlessly rejected – sometimes within minutes.

When FINALLY you get an email inviting you for an interview the momentary elation is instantly crushed by an overwhelming sense of dread. At this point, you take to Googling common interview questions and forcing your friends into mock interviews. Eventually, they succeed in convincing you that you have a fighting chance.

Until you get to your meeting and realise the interviewer is from the actual depths of hell and their only joy in life is to sadistically throw applicants off with the most bizarre questions. The Tab spoke to students who’ve been there and here are some of the weirdest questions they say they’ve been asked:

‘What is your relationship with your parents like?’

Straight off the bat, you can already tell that this interviewer has some unfulfilled dreams of becoming a Freudian psychiatrist.

When asked how this incredibly personal question was of any relevance to the job, the interviewer simply replied: “It’s because your relationship with your parents indicates how you’d treat a customer.”

Here the right thing to do would be to just walk out.

‘How many wheels are there in Barcelona?’

Where do you even start with a question like this? Do you panic about having limited knowledge of population density or do you ask the interviewer to clarify whether the answer should consider spare tires and kids’ toys?

Either way, I feel like this sort of conversation would end up being entirely unproductive.

‘Where do you see yourself in 30 years?’

Let’s be real, when you’re a student, making plans even a week in advance can be a struggle. At a push maybe some of us can provide a vague answer for the classic “where do you see yourself in five years?” but 30 is a REAL stretch.

And anyway, at the rate that things are going for students right now, in 30 years’ time we’ll probably all still be desperately struggling to get onto the property ladder.

‘If you were trapped on a desert island, what three things would you bring with you?’

This question is honestly just a subtle yet menacing hint about how the role in question will entail having some hardcore survival skills.

Students have also been asked a different version of this question in which ordinary items are substituted with luxury items so you might as well just become an applicant for Love Island.

‘What size do you wear?’

For context, this retail company wanted the student interviewee to wear the brand’s clothes and be some weird walking advert – but then the student says they were rejected for being the “wrong” size, which should probably be illegal if it isn’t already.

‘If you were a biscuit, which biscuit would you be and why?’

Next time you sit down to have a cup of tea with biscuits, take a moment to connect with the baked goods on a more personal level. Alternatively, take a quiz in your spare time to find out which biscuit is your spirit animal. You never know when you’ll need to make a snap decision about it in an interview.

‘How many ping pong balls fit in a plane?’

I honestly feel like the sole purpose of asking this in an interview is to have some sort of shock factor. Obviously, the key here is to be able to chat pure shit with confidence.

‘If you were a country, which country would you be and why?’

There’s actually no point even thinking about these sorts of questions because the moment you get asked one in an interview, you’ll lose all recollection of common knowledge and understanding of who you generally are as a person.