“How old are you?”
“Are you married?”
“Do you have children?”
“Do you have a stable personal life?”

These questions are not related to the job for which you are applying, but they do have a purpose to ask, they want to figure out something on you. So that it’s up to you to figure out and address their true concern.

For example, when an interviewer asks “Do you have a stable personal life?”, he or she is trying to protect the company from a bad situation that they’ve had to deal with in the past, such as an former employee’s personal problems interfered with the person’s ability to do the job. In this case the interviewer really wants to know is, will you be a reliable employee who can be counted upon to show up and do your job effectively, regardless of any personal problems you may have.

You have several choices to address odd interview questions:

You can simply say, “You can’t ask me that! It’s an inappropriate question!” then You have little chance to get job. So don’t this.

A smart choice to answer the question. Even if it’s wrong to ask, there’s nothing wrong with answering it. You should realize that answering personal questions may harm your chance of getting the job if what you are giving is not what they want to answer, but that is not worse than not answering the question.

For questions about your personal life, you can just give the positive aspects no matter what happened before. For instance, to answer “Do you have a stable personal life?”, say something like:

“Yes, I have a very stable personal life and I don’t foresee any changes in that regard. My career is important to me and my family is very supportive. There won’t be any
distractions affecting my work performance.”

An alternative to this type of questions is to ask a question back, ask for clarifying their concerns:

“How would my answer to that question directly relate to my ability to perform in this position?”

“Could you please rephrase or elaborate on your question? I want to make sure I address your concern.”

Now, let’s be silly:

How are Jelly Belly beans made?

How would you redesign an ATM?

How would you design a coffee maker for an automobile?

How would you design a keyboard for one-handed users?

Why is a manhole cover round?

How many gas stations are in San Francisco?

How many cars are their in the USA?

How many pennies would fit in this room?

You hired someone to work for you for 7 days and had a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into 7 connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make 2 breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?

How do you integrate computer technology into an elevator system for 100-story office building? How do you optimize for availability? How would variation of traffic over a typical work week, floor, or time of day affect this?

You have 4 jars of pills. Each pill is a certain weight, except for contaminated pills contained in one jar, where each pill is weight +1. How could you tell which jar had the contaminated pills in just one measurement?

Define a user interface for indenting selected text in a Word document. Consider selections ranging from a single sentence up through selection s of several pages. Consider selections not currently visible or only partially visible. What are the states of the new UI controls? How will the user know what the controls are for and when to use them?

How would you explain how to use MS Excel to your grandma?

What kind of software you can write to run a microwave oven from a computer?

You have a clock with lots of moving mechanical parts. You take it apart piece by piece without keeping track of the method of how it was disassembled. Then you put it back together and discover that three important parts were not included. How would you do about reassembling the clock?

If you could gather all of the computer manufacturers in the world together into one room and tell them one thing they would be compelled to do, what would it be?

Suppose you enter your home and hit the light switch, but nothing happens, — no light floods the room. What exactly, in order, are the steps you would take in determining the problem?

Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o’clock. Note that the hour and minute hand overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact time of the day that this happens?

Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turntable. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?

One train leaves Chicago at 15 mph heading for Boston. Another train leaves form Boston at 20 mph heading for Chicago on the same track. If a bird, flying at 25 mph, leave from Chicago at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?

If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

If you were a tree, what tree would you be?

What color you think could represent you best?

Questions like this do not make much sense but you have no choice rather than answering them. It is fairly easy to come out a good answer only if you prepare in advance.

What animal do you want to be? –
“I want to be a horse, strong, fast, and helpful.”
“I‘d be an eagle, fly high and have a broad vision.”

What tree would you be, then? –
“I can be a redwood, standing tall and evergreen.”
“I want to be a big oak tree, providing shade to people in hot summer time.”

What color? –
“I think the color of golden represents me best. It reflects my solid technical background, my responsibility and dedication.”
“I like color green. It represents my growth and success in both professional career and personal life.”

As you see, using your imagination and being creative, you can make tons of great answers. Whatever the answer you give, just let it deliver your positive attitude. No matter how silly the questions might be, it is a good opportunity for to make positive impression.

Want more silly questions? Here you get it. As you see, most silly questions are about what-if assumptions.

“Do you still want this job if you win lottery tonight?”

“Do you want to be the President of United States?”

“If you can choose, do you want to be Bill Gates or still be yourself?”