To get annoyed with pointless interview questions?

[Sparklycat]

A thread asking for help with thinking of interview questions for a teaching position has led to people saying that in their school they ask things like "why are manhole covers round?" and "if you could be an animal what would you be?". Really??? For a teaching job?? I'd just laugh at the interviewer and consider if I wanted to work for somewhere that considered that relevant. Or perhaps I am behind the times and things have moved on since I last went for interviews many years ago...probably OK if you go for an interview at Google though.

My sister was asked at an interview which version of "Just the way you are" she preferred. Billy Joel or Barry White

I agree to an extent melojello, and for that reason I think questions like 'what brand would you be' are very useful as they test exactly that - how do you think off the cuff, how would you think laterally, and what your thought process is.

Where I really can't see the point is when there is a "right" answer - like the Goldman Sachs example - and you're judged purely on the answer you give, not how you work it out. So if someone said 'it's round because it can't fall down the hole' they would get it 'right', but someone who talked about how manhole covers are installed and manufactured and talked around the efficiency of manufacturing standard-sized manhole covers in a round shape rather than a square shape (say) would get it 'wrong'. The candidate who got the 'right' answer is accepted because they happened to know the answer; the one who showed they had thought it through in a logical - even if incorrect - way, still got the answer wrong and therefore isn't accepted. It's that sort of thing that I think is really pointless, but I'm no HR expert nor a psychologist, so perhaps I'm missing something.