What were some of the most surprising or interesting interview questions you've either asked or been asked?
What were the most best responses you've either given or received to those questions?
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One time a candidate walked through a dcf in 3 seconds
"discount terminal value and cash flows to present with wacc"
“Why are manhole covers round?”
I was asked that in a Starbucks interview when I was 16 by a seemingly fat lesbian. I didn’t get the job. To this day I don’t know if she wanted the actual answer, from an engineering context, or it was some weird mindfuck question
Manholes are round because they cannot fall through versus if they were square.
What answer did you give?
Why are manhole covers round? Well, they're not just round, they're circular. They are perfectly symmetrical. Water flows into it evenly.
You know what else is round and perfectly symmetrical? The Starbucks logo. It is so symmetrical, it is perfect. Starbucks is the best in its category. Thus, manholes are also the best in its category. That is why manhole covers are round.
That's how I would have answered it. You just gotta be playful.
How many lightbulbs are in NYC?
What’s something intriguing that you learned about when browsing online on your free time?
"Tell me something about you that I can't learn from your resume."
Got rejected and the feedback was my answer for this specific answer felt too "forced / perfect / memorized." Rest of the interview was really awkward and ended early.
I genuinely did not prep for that question and went with the flow. Really pissed me off becaue prior to the first round, I was told by an internal contact that I was ranked in a position to make it to the final round as long as I had at least an 'average' interview (they only took a few candidates out of a pool of 800+ and interviewed <10 people for first rounds and <5 for final round). I was likely ranked in the top 5. Fairly unknown LDP that is highly regarded in its industry niche and had really good recent exits.
End of a super day and a Partner/MD at this pe fund and I got to talking about restaurants to visit in the city. He was giving me recommendations and half way thought asked if I had a fake ID. I was stunned for a second and then said no. I definitely gave myself away by not giving a quick answer. The dude just smiled and kept listing out restaurants. Got the offer btw.
I have "designer" on my resume and in an M&A interview the MD asked to see some of my designs. So we pulled up pictures of my artwork and he commented on the pieces. He was really into my art and I got the offer.
I was once asked "what's the third law of thermodynamics" when the interviewer discovered I did my undergrad in mechanical engineering, to which I replied with the third law of thermodynamics. The interesting part is how fucking dumb the interviewer was because his was response was to cock his head like he was a golden retriever and tell me there is no third law of thermodynamics; he said it used to be an inside joke with his college buddies.
The third law of thermodynamics is the entropy of a system approaches zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero. This moron didn't know the premise of his own dumb joke. The rest of the interview did not go well.
Don’t know much about the subject, but do you think your interviewer meant that it can only exist in theory since some of the input variables, like a state of absolute zero or perfect crystal don’t happen in reality, so it’s not applicable or used in practice?
I appreciate you're giving him the benefit of the doubt, but no, that's definitely not what he meant. And if it was then he's worse than just being ignorant, he fundamentally misunderstood his physics lessons. Isaac Newton proposed three laws of motion, the second of which is slightly out of date. It proposed that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on that object (with the proportionality constant being the mass of the object), which we now know isn't entirely correct because at relativistic speeds it breaks down. That doesn't mean, though, that there is no Newton's Second Law of Motion.
Besides, the third law of thermodynamics actually explicitly states it's impossible to reach absolute zero, even with idealized isentropic steps.
Do you like to drink, play golf, and fish?
My answer was yes. But I was honest and said I love to drink and socialize and while I don’t play golf regularly I recently took lessons. I was an incoming analyst out of college. He was a rainmaker for the firm.
"What was your GPA in school?"
When I was coming out of grad school and doing the interview cycle, a couple of places asked about my GPA. My undergrad GPA was comically bad but I had a good story as to why, accomplished things in life outside of school, got straight A's in grad school, etc. and was used to the whole dog and pony show. I had gotten good at answering the question.
Except for one interview where the two partners hated my answer, not because they thought it was bullshit or something, but because they wanted to hire "C students with social skills" over "nerds who don't know how to talk to people." I had to quickly pivot and tell some stories about getting shitfaced in undergrad, at which point they cheered up again and the interview got back on track.
please tell us what shop this was
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