These interviews invariably start off innocuously with the interviewer asking you a range of background questions drawn from your CV. From there they will in disperse straightforward questions with the curve balls. For the uninitiated it can be very disorientating as you wonder what is going be asked next.
Curve ball questions are wide ranging covering an array of topics and often seem out of place in the interview but they are specifically designed to provide an insight in to your values, priorities, motivations and prejudices.
Some examples of curve ball questions are:
- What is your passion in life?
- Who inspires you?
- If you could be another person who would you choose to be?
- If you had a dinner party and you could invite anyone who would you invite?
- If you were the Prime Minister what would you see as your first priority?
- Where would you like to go on holiday and if you could choose anyone to join you who would that be?
- Are you a cat or a dog person?
- What didn’t you like about your last boss?
- Do you think women are discriminated against in the financial services industry?
- Your boss is promoted and someone you don’t like is brought in to replace him/her. What would you do?
- You find out that someone is spreading malicious gossip about you at work what would you do?
- You are offered a promotion a close friend has coveted. What would you do?
- You are commended for a piece of work that was a group effort. Would you say anything?
- Someone has made a snide joke about someone in the office. Would you take it up with the person who made the joke? Or report them to your boss or HR?
- You come up with an innovative business solution and someone else claims it as their idea. What would do?
- Your boss flirts with you and you feel uncomfortable about it. What would you do?
- You have the opportunity for secondment to another business unit that would provide you with invaluable experience but your boss doesn’t want you to go. What do you do?
- You’ve been successful in securing a new job and a week in you hate it. What do you do?
- A recruiter calls you with a great career opportunity but the company you are with has provided you in your career advancement with training, promotions and challenging work. What do you do?
- What is the biggest mistake that you have made and what did you do to rectify it?
These twenty questions are the tip of the ice berg and it is not unknown for interviewers to put a great deal of emphasis on curve ball questions using follow ups to chase down particular motivational or values based issues. However, they can be also problematic for the interviewer unless they have considerable experience in interviewing and understand how the mosaic of questions will illicit responses that will build candidate profiles that they are seeking.
For the candidate it is important that they take a cautious approach particularly when asked questions that they are not comfortable with. Navigating your around some of these questions may also reflect negatively on you as the interviewer might think that you are trying to avoid giving a truthful response.
If you are not sure how to answer a particular question then tell the interviewer explaining your reasoning. If he/she is not able to assist then either tell them that you are not comfortable with the question or answer to the best of your ability without compromising yourself.
Quite often candidates can feel ambushed by curve ball questions and try to outsmart them by making up an answer they think will be viewed positively, however your best course of action is to do what you think is the best thing for you and answer the questions honestly.
As an end note; a candidate was asked the question, ‘if you were the prime minister what would you see as your first priority?’ He answered that he would bomb one of our Asian neighbours and was surprised that he didn’t get the job.
Peter Dawson
Principal
The Dawson Partnership
Author of Successful Recruitment – Transforming your business through best practice
www.dawsonpartnership.com.au