How Many Basketballs Can You Put In This Room?

If you think the title of this article is odd, you're not alone. But "How many basketballs can you put in this room?" was a real question reportedly asked by a Google executive interviewing a job applicant.

And it's one of the 25 strangest job interview questions from 2010, according to Glassdoor, a community site for those posting and seeking jobs, which compiled its list from 80,000 submissions. They included such head-scratchers as:An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear?

How many traffic lights are in Manhattan? How are M&Ms made? If you could be any superhero, who would it be? If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?

In case you're wondering if these very weird questions were asked by some very weird sole proprietors - maybe somebody at a dry cleaners where the chemicals might have affected their thinking - the answer is no. They were all put forth to job seekers by representatives of major companies such as Google, AT&T, and US Bank.

As a small business coach, I do advise my clients to vet potential employees as best as possible; even perhaps getting a little creative in order to find out how the applicant really thinks.

But I'm not sure how trying to price a piece of fruit by providing prices for other pieces of fruit is really going to help anyone get a bead on how well a person might perform a job - unless you operate a fruit stand, of course.

Instead of creating outlandish scenarios that bear no relation to your reality, it's better to put open-ended questions to a job seeker that require him or her to discuss who they are and how they see themselves, such as these suggested by ABC News:

If you had only one word to describe yourself, what would it be? How do you take advantage of your strengths? How do you compensate for your weaknesses? What's one thing you would like to do better? What's your plan for improving? What do you think are the most important attributes of successful people? How do you rate yourself in those areas? Describe a time when you were asked to do something you weren't trained to do. How did you handle it?

And my personal favorite…

If you get the job, how could you lose money for me?

The right employee adds value to your business above and beyond their pay grade. The wrong employee adds more stress and, often, more work for you just because you don't trust what they're up to and you end up following up on every little thing they do.

The right job interview questions will give you the answers you're after.

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