But Google has woken up to this HR epidemic and slowly weeded out absurdities being asked, according to a report quoting a former Google recruiter.
Below are the 15 questions banned by Google:
Q1. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
Job: Product Manager
Q2. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
Job: Product Manager
Q3. In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?
Job: Product Manager
Q4. Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco
Job: Product Manager
Q5. Why are manhole covers round?
Job: Software Engineer
Q6. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
Job: Product Manager
Q7. How many times a day does a clock's hands overlap?
Job: Product Manager
Q8. Explain the significance of "dead beef"
Job: Software Engineer
Q9. A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Job: Software Engineer
Q10. You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?
Job: Software Engineer
Q11. You're the captain of a pirate ship and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?
Job: Engineering Manager
Q12. You have eight balls all of the same size 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighing?
Job: Product Manager
Q13. You are given 2 eggs, if you have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process.
Job: Product Manager
Q14. Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
Job: Product Manager
Q15. You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
Job: Product Manager
