Columnist Susan Snyder: Fielding questions is a job

Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 | 5:13 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION December 13 - 14, 2003

It's the pickup line of the corporate world.

The job interview idiot question.

What are some of the worst?

Glad you asked. There's a study.

But then, isn't there always? This is America. What we don't sell, we study and rate until a trend emerges that we can sell. We create a new field of consulting so someone can write a book, make a few Power Point presentations and retire.

Capitalism rocks.

Anyway, this particular query about odd interview questions was studied by OfficeTeam, an international administrative staffing company that has an office in Las Vegas.

The survey asked executives from 1,000 of the United States' largest companies about the types of questions posed in job interviews and why.

To truly appreciate the impact of these questions, picture yourself wearing an outfit you bought yesterday sitting across from a guy wearing a suit that cost more than your last car.

Some of the questions he asks you, the survey results say, are designed to help him get a handle on your professional aspirations:

"What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?"

(Um, 11?)

"What classes did you like in high school?"

(The regular school or the detention program?)

"Do you see yourself in my position in the future?"

(Not without medication.)

I am not making up these questions (just the answers). But it seems that as job candidates increasingly run a gauntlet of interviews, rather than talking with just one person, interviewers ask any question they think will give insight into the applicants' personalities.

Rick Schraub, OfficeTeam's Las Vegas branch manager, recalled a zinger he was asked while interviewing for an advertising job.

"I was asked, 'If you could be any kind of tree, what would you be?' " Schraub said. "I got the job. And I later asked her what answer she was looking for and she said, 'A money tree, of course.' "

Oh well. Schraub's answer during the interview?

An oak.

Schrab doesn't ask trick questions during interviews, but he said he understands why some employers do.

"They want to know how professionals will react to difficult questions," he said. "They want to know how well you think on your feet."

They want to know whether you'll make them look stupid later. With 12 people doing the interviewing, it's harder to lay a worker's incompetence on one person's shoulders.

Only the questions suffer more than the applicant when these affairs stretch into two or three days. (A Florida newspaper once flew me in for four days -- a trip that cost roughly half the paltry salary they were offering).

Consider:

"What's your favorite color?"

Or, "If you could be any animal, what would you be?"

And, "What made you move to a backward city like this one?"

My personal favorite: "Why are manhole covers round?"

At some point the question becomes not how fast you think on your feet, but how fast your feet can take you out of there.