Biggest curveballs encountered during interviews?

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I was interviewing for the standard financial analyst role and one of the two interviewers asked what my ideal office would look like. That question ruined my interview because I was so dumbfounded that he asked it that I let out something that would translate to "what kind of question is that?"

EDIT: Why the monkey shit?

Last year I went into an interview for a school-year internship at a family office. The interviewer was about 30 minutes late; his secretary looked like she was in her late 40's/early 50's, but it was hard to tell due to extensive botox. Her jeans were unbuttoned at the top, and you could see parts of her underwear. When the guy finally showed up, his hair was totally disheveled, and he was screaming profanities at his secretary, dropping the F bomb like a dozen times. To top it off, his dog was running around in the office without a leash, licking my shoes. The interviewer asked me with a straight face whether I'm ok with the dog being in the room during the interview. It was surreal; I thought I was getting punked and nearly expected Ashton Kutcher to show up with a crew of cameramen.

When I got home I googled my interviewer, thinking he was probably some loser who couldn't hack it in the upper echelons of finance. I felt a smug sense of self-righteousness, confident that my Google search would yield a broken desperate man who had been humiliated by life, with only a dog to comfort him. Alas, much to my chagrin, he had done fairly well for himself in finance, and the web was littered with photos of him with his gorgeous bombshell blonde girlfriend (much younger) at various high society NYC and Hamptons events.

I got one the other day, "You have a great resume, and it's obvious you are an extremely driven guy. I'm just worried that with all the down-time and menial tasks you will become too bored with the job."

To which I responded I understood and am prepared for the long hours and to pay my dues as I work up to more responsibility, and that I understood the proof-reading, power-point and attention to detail were all important aspects of the job.

He didn't accept this question, emphasizing that i would be bored as hell doing investment banking.

The second time I responded, "That's funny, I've never heard any analysts say that was a problem for them and I don't think it will be an issue for me. I am very excited by the prospect of both live deals and pitching for new business and relish the opportunity to preform on both."

He seemed to like this second one better. Not much of a curve ball, but more than a little confusing in the moment.

I have three stories.

I interviewed with a boutique for an internship while in undergrad. I ran a lawncare business with my father during my free time and had that listed on my resume. One of the interviewers had looked up our business online, where my name and my father's name were on the About Us page of our website. The interviewer goes "Who is Sil's father's name?" I guess he was just trying to verify that I actually ran the business, but seriously, WTF?!

I had an interview with another boutique while in undergrad. The boutique consisted of one female MD, an associate, and two FT analysts. I made it through the first round with the associate and the analysts, but the last round got me. I got on the phone with the female MD and for literally 20 minutes straight (I'm not even exaggerating) she ranted about how the IB industry is sexist and how tough it is to be a woman and how she got pregnant and was fired from several BBs because of it. My interview was literally "Hi, Sil, I am MD XYZ...rant on sexism."

During FT recruiting, I interviewed with a MM bank. They had their superday set up so there were five rooms with two bankers each and each room had a different theme (e.g. technicals, market-related questions, fit, etc.). I got to the technical room (one analyst, one associate) and was prepared for technicals, but instead got the most off-the-wall "technical" questions. I cannot remember any of them, but they were along the lines of "spell EBITDA" or "what happens to revenue in CY+1 if the growth rate is 5%?". At the end, the associate goes "Ok, so I always got this BS question when I interviewed, so I'm going to ask you this. What animal would you be if you were one?" The analyst burst out laughing and goes "Are you serious?". I do not know what made me go "WTF?!" more, the silly questions up until that point, the associate's "animal" question, or the analyst calling the associate out on his silly question. They ended up dinging me, and honestly, I am happy that they did because it saved me the awkward "I took another offer" call.

After getting through almost 2 straight interviews of technicals, the associate's final question was for me to "pitch Him a target for an LBO." I paused and asked to clarify if he was asking what characteristics make a good LBO candidate ... but he wanted an actual pitch, and looked at me like I was crazy for not preparing one. I thought it was out of left field but I ended up getting to the next round. Not sure if anyone's gotten that exact one before.

One time, they were doing multiple interviews for different positions. When they called my name I got up and entered what I thought was a tax interview.. It was for a senior manager in audit and they got down to questions immediately. It took 5 minutes for them to realize there were two people interviewing with my name and I was in the wrong interview!

I had the biggest curveball thrown at me when I was the interviewer. First job out of school at an REPE firm as a 2/3 year analyst. We were a pretty small team and recruiting wasn't very structured so the experienced analysts did a lot of the initial interviewing, especially technicals, and since I was the most proficient one they expected me to be that guy who everyone hates and drill technicals. This kid sitting in front of me seemed like a nervous Nelly to begin with and I started getting into basic RE technicals (which are pretty simple, no offense to the RE guys), excel skills, any knowledge of Argus, things like that. After blowing a few softballs he actually said "I was told there would be no math in this position." I'm not quite sure if my jaw actually hit the conference table or it just felt like it did, or if I laughed out loud. I didn't know how to respond: he was interviewing for a (financial) analyst position at an investment firm, not as a prof in an english lit department. I walked out and people asked me what I thought and my response was something along the lines of "was that an LP's retarded nephew?"

as a junior energy trader one of my counterparts asked me if i would be interested in joining them. They had just got a ton of money from DE Shaw and one of the quicker growing desks in the space so I said yes i would like to chat about joining. Next day I have a quick chat with one of their guys and he asks me one question about a subject i know pretty well. I give him like 3-4 reasons for my reply and explain how and why i said this or that. He then asks me how could I lose the most amount of money trading that market. I obv didnt know the right answer and my call ended. Turns out it was the CEO on the call and he interviewed all traders himself.

"Which comes first, chicken or egg?"

True story. The same interviewer asked me to write a short story about road congestion in ~10 minutes and tell me to sell a wallet to him. This was for an ER position.

A friend of mine was once asked about who will win in a fight, The Incredible Hulk or The Thing.

"Is it possible to be too moral?"

BB SA Interviewer (Associate Interviewer). After asking him to repeat/clarify the question a few times to buy myself some time I essentially gave a bullshit answer saying sort of yes/sort of no. Bad decision. Guy just kept grilling me and started throwing examples at me like Bill Ackman shorting Herbalife and profiting just from him saying he shorted it. I gave my view, but he didnt seem to like it. Interview was going really well up until that point. Luckily though, I still got the SA offer and am now FT at the same firm :).

To this day I still don't know what the proper answer to a question like that is, so feel free to enlighten me.

I had "knowledgeable in Spanish" on my resume and the interviewer broke out in full Spanish mid way through the interview.

Towards the end of an hour-long interview he goes, "What's my name?". FUCK!!!!!

Maybe not the biggest curveball, but it caught me off guard. I was interviewing for a Canadian bank (IBD) summer position and the analyst asked me to talk about a deal he had worked on. I didn't know who I was going to be interviewing with before the interview, or even which group. He also worked in one of the smaller groups in the bank. Definitely caught me off guard.

Compare playing high school football to being an IB analyst.

Earlier in the same interview mentioned above, they had an intern pull up my facebook page. Apparently the intern was a 'friend of friend' so he had more access to my info. They went through my photos one by one in front of me. One interviewer kept going on the interview questions, while the other one was browsing through my facebook page, occasionally signaling to the other interviewer to check something out. It was nerve-racking as hell.

threads like this i'm always reminded of this topic: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/whats-the-hardest-interview-quest…

I had an interviewer insist my technical answer was wrong. I had CRE listed as internship experience, and the very first thing he said when he entered the room - even before his name - was "How do you calculate a cap rate?" I said it was NOI/Price, and after several "Yes, I'm sure"s he continued to insist I was wrong. He then offered that it was NOI/Value, which I said didn't make sense because 1. what the hell is value and 2. that implied a different price doesn't affect the rate.

Anyways this dickbrain turned out to be an accountant for 8 years with zero real estate experience. He obviously just ran a google search and failed to pull a gotcha.

I've had the what animal are you question before during an interview for a valuation analyst at a boutique with multiple interview rooms. Got asked the animal question in a different room, but in one of the rooms is 4 analysts and a manager, the manager asks me all questions and speaks 95% of the time, but just as I'm about to leave the interview, one of the analysts asks "A penguin walks into the room wearing a sombrero, where is he from, and why is he here?"

Made up some BS about global warming and the penguin being from the south. Ended up not getting an offer.

Not really a curve ball but a friend of mine was interviewing for some kind of data mining/analyst role and he said that one of the people he interviewed with was working on a spreadsheet and asked if he knew anything about excel. My friend said he considered himself to be extremely well versed in excel. The interviewer asked him to help him see if he could solve the problem. My friend solved this problem. The guy had a his information filtered and couldn't figure out why some information he was looking at a couple of minuets ago, and I quote "simply vanished into thin air".

I was once asked, "Are you actually interested in our firm? Or are we just a warm up for the bigger firms that you're interviewing with?" Totally caught me off guard. It was the first question of the interview.

This just showed me that this partner had very low self-esteem.. Worst/shortest interview i've been a part of; it only lasted 15 minutes. Needless to say, I didn't get the offer.

Yesterday - "If you were a tree, what tree would you be?" Totally caught me off guard. The rest of the interview was flawless, but I couldn't give him an answer on that one.

I was asked in an interview at a "prestigious" I-bank for an internal hedge fund position by the "head of Alternative Investments:" Why did you not go to an Ivy league school?

I once interviewed for a F100 company, and after 4+ hours of interviews, I was brought into an empty cube and handed a pen and sheet of paper. I was asked to write 1 page about an object they handed me, which ended up being a fire sprinkler head. The purpose was to assess my ability to look at an item and determine how it works, clearly articulate my thoughts, and verify my ability to write with good sentence structure and correct grammar.

I turned down the offer, but I now do a very similar assessment with candidates. Great way to test somebody's ability to reason through something unfamiliar, explain it, and get a sample of writing that hasn't been peer reviewed.

Got dinged for correcting the interviewer ("senior" underwriter). The first part of the interview was 15 minute prep talk of the business and the company stats. I prepared diligently for the position, and knew almost everything about the banks group. He was relaying incorrect info (maybe outdated intro?), and I politely corrected him with, "aren't the numbers XX with latest deal Y, your underselling yourself." And I got a WTF look from satan himself, the rest of the interview was garbage he got on his phone leaned back and never made eye contact again. I asked for his card, and got "I'm all out," response. A little irrelevant, but caught me off guard someone would come in with incorrect info, when we are expected to know as much about the firm we can find out.

I got asked about military history (it was on my resume) and what the US tactically did wrong in the Iraq invasion/aftermath militarily. I answered but thought that either I got the job or the guy was just messing with me. Offer came 2 days later

Back in business school, I interviewed for an associate position at a well-known bulge-bracket bank and at the end was told, "Sorry we can't continue with you. We're concerned because you can get a job at any of the bulge firms and we don't want people who are that qualified." (!!!)