welcome back today we want to talk about five left field interview questions you may get and how to answer them now if you've been following us you know that you can prepare fairly well for most interview questions if you have a good elevator pitch a good closing technique a strategy for handling objections or tough questions and a few good stories up your sleeve for Behavioral interviews you can pretty much be well set for most interviews yes however when there are these left field questions that come up it really is challenging to fully be prepared for those questions because they are always changing and often these questions are asked to unsettle you they're they're doing that un purpose um so answering them gives you a chance to really show how you can recover be quick on your feet so if you just have that mindset I think that's really helpful it's so important yeah and they're a moving Target I mean every time we meet with our students we hear about new ones that are coming up and they're some are more ridiculous than others but today we're going to share just five examples of of left field questions we've heard our students be asked and then we'll talk about how to answer them so one example is if our team was a bike what part of the bike would you be another similar one who is your superhero and why if you were an animal what kind of animal would you be sometimes if you were a dog or if you were a tree those are common if you won the $10 million Lotto right tomorrow how would you spend the money I would not apply for this J I was going to say that would be a really good answer um and what the fifth one is what are four possible uses for for this box of paper clips or this stapler or whatever happens to be on their desk right and the thing to remember in answering all these questions is this there are no right or wrong answers so just give yourself that little like perm bit of information like yeah little permission slip and how you answer is far more important than what you answer so let's really dive into that okay all right so the bike question yeah okay think about your qualities and then think about the parts of a bike and think about what part of that bike aligns with your quality so for example the person who told us this story was actually my daughter she said the handlebars because I'm a leader I'm always in charge but if your skills are more um efficiency the gears are what make the bike efficient so if you're an engineer you might say efficient if you are someone who likes to keep things in check maybe an auditor an account you might say the brakes because they keep things in control so I would say the Bell or the Bell right that's right right like because you're the welcom you're doing great exactly hello to everybody I'd probably be the handlebars just like my daughter yeah um okay what was the next one the superhero yeah the superhero and I think the superhero and the animal are kind of the same okay again you want to think of the animal or the superhero whose qualities align with yours and of course align with your positive qualities so let's say you're um going for a job in employee relations employ relations it's a lot of dealing with difficult personalities you might say Labrador Retriever because they're really in tune with other people's feelings they're very warm um if using the dog example again if you were um you know applying for some type of law enforcement job you might say a German Shepherd uh because of their loyalty and their smarts and their fearlessness a same thing with the superhero you know let's say let's say the most important part of the job is agility you're coming in to help run an agile workplace and you're going to be moving into the organization at a time during change you might say Spider-Man because of his flexibility so it's always just taking I don't know anything and I know nothing about Spider-Man because I don't watch superhero movies but I know he climbs so I came up with that answer right here on the fly so it's just kind of thinking about what's going to be legitimate the quality that I have and then being able to talk about it within that context of the animal or the tree or the superhero y all right how about the lottery question this is a good one because you have to be honest what I said yeah I actually I think that answer would be absolutely perfect if you didn't hear what Kelly said as a joke she said I probably wouldn't be applying for this job that's a great answer because remember it's not what you're saying it's it's it's the confidence that with which you deliver it right and that would have been a great one because it's a dumb question well is it the confidence is one piece of it but is also the authenticity because they really want to see like who am I working with so I'm working with someone who has a good sense of humor and who's confident right because only a confident person would say something like that what you don't want to say conversely is I would give it all away because that's ly I mean basically like I don't want to be with someone who's that good and it it seems inauthentic so but it is a chance to show your values so I think Kelly's answer is great if you feel comfortable saying that the the most comfortable answer for most people would be talk about where you might give some away and that is gives them a little window window into your life because you might say you know I have a single aunt who's struggling I would give you know a million to her and so that gives you a little tells you a little bit about your stock um you know I'm a cancer survivor or I you know I'm an environmentalist so I would give x amount to that um but I would stay shy I would shy away from saying I would give it all away because I just feel like that's kind of a lame answer um it's almost like the question we've given at other examples where what's your weakness I'm a perfectionist yes it's just kind of like eh well and you want I I think the way that you can come at these questions that can feel like a challenge and turn it around so that you are making it something that makes you stand out your whole job on an interview and to be memorable so your answer was memorable yes and so you don't want to say something that is cliche or is like the good answer you know the safe answer you really want to have something that's you're going to be remembered by but Remembered in a good and professional way because I think sometimes these questions too can also be trying to push you off of and sometimes they are leading you there sometimes they're they are in the gray area of even propriety um depending on how far the interviewer wants to push you so yes you want to stay professional you want to stay confident you want to give an authentic answer and by just by doing things you'll be memorable if you if you do those things okay and then the last one that you talked about was the paperclip question questions like this are the ones that trip people up the most okay because the others you can kind of you know if you're quick on your feet you kind of BS your way through this but this one you've got to actually look at something and figure it out yes but remember what looking for in this answer is just testing to see how creative you are testing to see how resourceful you are testing your confidence in under heat so you would take the box of paper clips because usually it's something that they haven't do and look at it give yourself a second say well obviously I could use it as a paperclip I could also dump the box out and use it as a box I could unfold the box and if I was out of paper I could use it as something for writing I could link the paperclips together and make a necklace or make a chain I could open up a paperclip and use it to pick a lock I can put them through my ears like I did when I was a young girl exactly to make dangly earrings because I wasn't allowed to wear that much exactly that's good there's another good authentic answer so again thinking on the spot not worrying about right or wrong and understanding that they are not these are playful questions another thing to know is that if you're getting asked these questions they like you yeah they're not going to waste this question on someone that they don't like because if I know and I usually know within the first few minutes whether I'm going to hire you or not if I already know I'm not going to hire you I'm not going to invest a lot of time in these easy in these fun questions because I just kind of kind of want to get it done with no offense but yeah works so at the end of the day it's the way to Ace these questions is just to answer them confidently and with a smile on your face because a smile can really do a lot when you're when you're um doing this the other thing I actually there's one thing before we end when you get a question like this and you get thrown off one of the things that we've told our students is it's okay to sort of talk it out loud right pause the best way to pause without sitting there silently like this trying to think of it is to restate the question so using the paperclip example okay so you're asking me what uses four uses for this box of paper clips okay so what I've done is I've restated the question but I restated it slowly which gave me my brain a little time to start thinking about what I could do as opposed to being asked the question and then staring at the box of paperclips it feels longer when it's quiet right all right so there you have it five left field interview questions and how to answer them if you liked what you heard today you can visit us and learn more about our programming at www. prepar to launch youth letter.com thanks