How to Answer Curve-Ball Interview Questions

Do Your Warm-Ups

Job interviews tend to put you in a subservient position. Presumably you need the money and want the job, so you go to the interview full of jittery nerves -- because you fear blowing it and losing the job offer. To keep your nerves at bay, never go into a job interview unprepared. Know the job description, know the company and know how your skills fit into the picture. Knowing your stuff boosts your confidence, and that helps you think more clearly during an interview. Then, when the interviewer throws a curve ball your way, you can trust yourself to answer with a strong swing.

Take a Timeout

If you don’t immediately know the answer to a question, don’t worry. Tell your interviewer that she asked an interesting question and that you need a minute to think about it. Job interviewers ask these kinds of questions because they want to know how their employees will respond to stressful challenges or unusual situations. So calm your nerves and consider the question honestly. If you can’t find an answer within a timely fashion -- 30 seconds to a minute -- you could either ask her to return to the question later so that you can work on it in the back of your head in the meantime, or you could say that you honestly don’t have a good answer ready, perhaps because of your nerves at the interview or because it’s a question that requires more than a few seconds of dedicated thought.

Bunt

A small, targeted answer can get the job done just as well as a big, strategic one. If your interviewer throws a curve ball at you and you don’t know how to respond, try to break it down into something simpler. For example, the University of California Santa Cruz gives an example of a “behavioral” interview query: “Describe a time when you tried to persuade a person or group to do something they didn't want to do.” Think about the various aspects of “persuasion.” Persuasion first means knowing your own needs, by having clear priorities. Then it means identifying the needs of the other parties, by listening to them and appreciating their point of view. Finally, it means developing a solution to satisfy both sets of needs, by making your success dependent on theirs. Whenever a question seems too complicated, just look at the individual parts and something will come to you.

Don’t Swing

If that curve-ball question strays too far from the plate, don’t swing. In other words, don’t answer a question that seems absurd or inappropriate. Instead, tell the interviewer that you don’t see the relevance of the question. Ask him to give you some more information about what he wants to know, or ask him to phrase the question in a different way. Or, if he asked something blatantly unethical or illegal, tell him you don’t intend to answer that kind of question. You might even want to think twice about accepting a job with a company that grills its prospective employees in such a dubious way.