Playing at Working: Job Interviews and the Silly Questions Game

The longer I’m unemployed, the stranger it feels to get dressed up for an interview and enter an office building filled with similarly dressed-up, but employed, people.

On such occasions, I find myself having odd thoughts like, Wow, these people all have jobs.  How is it that they’re still working?  They’re joking and laughing, like I used to on a typical work day, as if everything is fine and normal.  They’re ordering Friday lunch takeout, like I used to do with my colleagues.  So this is what it’s like on the inside…I almost feel like they’re museum specimens and I’m observing them, curiously, but with a detached interest, since I’m not one of them.

You become very disconnected from the “real” world of work when you haven’t been part of it in a long time.  At least, I’m feeling that disconnection.

Even interviews seem like a game to be played, won or lost.  The trend in most (but not all) job interviews these days, in my experience, requires the interviewer to ask you silly questions like, “Tell me about a work incident in which you turned lemons into lemonade.”  Maybe I’ve been applying for the wrong jobs, but how does the answer to this question demonstrate my writing and editing skills and creativity or explain how my background and experience fit the requirements of the job?

When I’m answering these types of questions, what I really feel like saying is, would it be OK if we just dispense with the goofy questions and talk about the job?

I actually had an interview like this recently -- we talked about the job.  The interviewer explained the job and its requirements and asked me about my relevant experiences.  I answered her questions and asked her my own questions about the job.  It was more like a conversation than an interview.  I don’t know why this type of interview is the exception these days, but it is.  I was a manager for years and had to interview and hire people.  I never once asked one of those “lemonade” questions, and I hired talented, conscientious employees.

Are better hiring decisions made on the basis of the lemonade questions?  There must be a reason why they're the norm today.  Maybe when the volume of candidates is high, the dopey questions help interviewers separate the wheat from the chaff.  I don’t know.  To me, it feels like they’re testing you, trying to see if they can trip you up or stump you.  (Of course, I know we’re supposed to rehearse our answers to potential kooky questions ahead of time.)

I also think that answering oddball questions favors those job candidates who are fast on their feet: the quick thinkers.  Some of us are ponderers.  We need to mull things over a bit before we respond.  Sure, we can practice answers ahead of time, but what if a surprise question is sprung?  People like me, who may need a little time to think things through before answering, are doomed.  The game will be lost.

Perhaps I’d have more respect for these kinds of questions if I understood why most interviewers nowadays seem to love them.  Is there anyone reading this, a recruiter or hiring manager or someone who knows these things, who can shed some light on the value of off-the-wall questions in the context of a job interview? 

Or is it simply that “mullers” need not apply?