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Duration
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Caption
You now have to expect the unexpected in interviews questions. #interview #interviewtips #careercoach #careertok #learnitontiktok
Transcript
You are going to get asked some interview questions that are meant to catch you off guard. Let me say more about this, especially if you are interviewing in the tech space. First off, who am I? I'm a 20-plus year recruiting leader. I've created a business helping people craft their stories for their next opportunities. I do a ton of interview prep with individuals. It's my superpower. I've been doing this for a very long time. And more and more people are coming to me and saying, Melissa, I'm getting asked the most random questions. If you were a bug, what would you be? If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why? If you were stuck on a desert island, what book would you take? I mean the most random things. And let me say this, I'm not a fan of this at all. In my prior world, I've played primarily in the tech space. Ten-ish years ago, this was common practice. And the reason we were doing it was to see how you think in an interview. Like if the question would just completely catch you off guard and make you stumble around. Or can you very quickly think through that situation and give me an answer? And I am telling you, I am starting to hear this more and more. I'd love you to drop into the comments if this is happening to you in an interview and what kind of industry are you in. But I'm saying this to everybody, be ready for this kind of stuff. It's going to be completely out of left field. And all they are listening for is how you think about it, right? Does it catch you off guard? Does it make you sort of sit back on your back heels and you can't recover from it? Or do you have an answer of some kind? So you can't practice every single question that's ever going to get asked of you in an interview. And these weird things are starting to happen. I'm not a fan, but they're starting to come out more and more, at least based on the clients that I'm working with and where they're interviewing. I'd love to hear from you all if this is happening and be ready. Good luck out there.
Hook analysis
brand_fit: with_changes“You are going to get asked some interview questions that are meant to catch you off guard.”
Pattern
warning
Format
—
Topic
interview-performance
Sub-topic
curveball interview questions
Content angle
interviewers are testing how you think, not what you answer
CTA
Drop in the comments whether this is happening to you and what industry you're in
Narrative structure
warning -> credentials -> examples of the questions -> why interviewers do it -> 'be ready'
AU transplant
yes
Transplant note
Fully transplantable. Nothing is country-specific — no US salary bands, no visa or employment law. The curveball-question phenomenon ('if you were a bug, what would you be', desert island book) shows up in Australian tech and consulting panel interviews the same way. An Ark rebuild would swap the generic 'tech space' framing for named Australian sub-sectors and add the extra layer that matters here: an internationally-trained candidate is already carrying an accent-and-fit assumption into the room, so a stumble on a nonsense question gets read more harshly.
Brand fit note
The topic is on-mission (interview-performance) and the underlying insight — they're scoring your thinking process, not your answer — is a real contrarian inversion worth keeping. Everything around it fails the voice doc. It does not open cold: line two is 'First off, who am I?' followed by a credential block ('20-plus year recruiting leader', 'it's my superpower'), which is exactly the throat-clearing the doc bans. There is no mechanism — the payload is literally 'be ready for this kind of stuff' and 'good luck out there', which the pre-ship check flags as encouragement, not mechanism. It is stacked with hedges the doc says to delete on sight ('Ten-ish years ago', 'at least based on the clients that I'm working with', 'these weird things are starting to happen'). No numbers beyond self-promotional tenure. Every sentence in this could have been written by a generic career coach. Usable only if rebuilt as subdivision teaching: split curveball questions into types (pressure-test, values-probe, culture-fit filler) and give a two-beat answer frame for each, with counts.