i get to interview someone today and someone else tomorrow. my boss is out of town, so i have to cover all the bases during the interview. it’s been a while since i’ve interviewed someone, so i had to brush off the interview question cobwebs. my boss wants me to ask a question that i hate to ask, but i’m gonna do it anyway.
the question is: if you had to be an animal, but animal would you be and why?
What’s the “right answer” to that animal question, in your company’s point of view?
there actually isn’t a “right answer”. there is, however, a wrong answer. the wrong answer is to say, “i don’t know”.
the purpose of the question is really twofold:
fold one: throw off the candidate by asking a question that is unrelated to what we were previously talking about and unrelated to their job. see how they react and see how quick they are on their feet.
fold two: see what kind of animal they see themselves as. we may not want people who think that they identify most with turtles because they can hide away in their shell when things get dangerous.
i personally said that i would be a tiger because when i was playing volleyball a few days before the interview and i was at the net, i would hold up my paws menancingly and growl “RAR!” to the girls on the opposite side of the net.
The turtle thing has other cultural implications, tho. For example, due to Aesop’s fable “The Turtoise and the Hare,” a turtle would work steadfastly and consistently to still come out ahead of the other coworkers who may have a great start, but would ultimately run out of momentum and motivation and miss their deadlines.
I would be a mosquito so I can bug all my coworkers and sting them if I don’t like them, and spread disease. It benefits management by exposing the coworkers’ tolerance levels as well as their ability to concentrate and work with distractions around, plus it eliminates competition for me if the disease I carry is a life-threatening one. West Nile or Asian Flu or something like that. Maybe ebola. Management can also see which employees are the whiners who call in sick just cuz they contracted ebola. Either that, or I’d be a cat.