Can you prepare for nightmare interview questions?

We have shared a few nightmare interview questions with you today to help you plan your nightmare interview.

In the main, employers will use a structured job interview process, asking of standardized interview questions which are then scored against a set of pre-written criteria.

The criteria are based on main job duties. In this way, most job interview questions can be predicted. If an employer needs a creative team player with IT skills, you be bet that three of the interview questions will be:

• Give me an example of overcoming a problem creatively
• Tell me about a time you were successful while working within a team
• How would your deal with (IT problem)

Some employers will also add one or two ‘nightmare interview questions’ these are questions that are hard to predict and questions that are framed negatively.

Nightmare Interview Questions

• Tell me how you would handle a co-worker who wasn’t doing their fair share of the work. What did you do?
• Have you ever worked with a supervisor or boss that you didn’t respect? What happened?
• Describe a decision you made that was a failure?
• How do you convey technical information to a non-technical member of staff?

• What would you do differently if you could start your career over?
• Would you be happy to take work away with you while on holiday?
• Why did you apply for this particular position and in what way will this role stretch you?
• If you were the CEO of this company what would be the first thing you would change and why?

• Are you a risk taker?
• If you could meet with a historical figure, who would it be and why?
• If you were an animal what would you be?
• Convince me to hire you?

How to answer nightmare interview questions

These tricky curveball interview questions, for most interviewees, put them on the back foot.

What is important to remember, is the reason hiring managers ask interview questions. The bottom line is that each interview question is relating to the job criteria and job duties. An employer won’t just ask a ‘nightmare question’ for the hell of it.

When asked a tricky question, first think – what skill, quality, or experience is the employer really asking about.

As an example, the famous interview question ‘how many grids are there in London?’ isn’t a question about sewage. The underpinning criteria for the ‘grid’ question is mathematically problem-solving.

The employer, for this interview question, wants to hear how an applicant would work out the number of grids in a large area. The answer, by the way, is working out the average number of grids in a small area and then using a simple sum to times the number of grids by the square footage of London.

The three steps to answering a nightmare question are:

• Listen to the question
• Break the question down to understand the job criteria underpinning the question
• Give a confident answer