Companies are fiercely competing for IT talent right now, and making smart hires is more important than ever. Can any of these strange interview questions help your company land the perfect tech employee? 

Career website Glassdoor recently sorted through tens of thousands of questions submitted by job seekers and compiled a list of the 25 strangest interview questions applicants were asked in 2012.

Many of the questions were asked by large tech firms — Google, for example, is well-known for its oddball interview questions, and questions from hiring managers at Dell and Forrester also made the cut.

These were the 25 strangest interview questions asked last year, according to Glassdoor:

1. If you were to get rid of one state in the US, which would it be and why?
2. How many cows are in Canada?
3. How many quarters would you need to reach the height of the Empire State building?
4. A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?
5. What song best describes your work ethic?
6. [Amazon CEO] Jeff Bezos walks into your office and says you can have a million dollars to launch your best entrepreneurial idea. What is it?
7. What do you think about when you are alone in your car?
8. How would you rate your memory?
9. Name 3 previous Nobel Prize Winners.
10. Can you say “Peter Pepper Picked a Pickled Pepper” and cross-sell a washing machine at the same time?
11. If we came to your house for dinner, what would you prepare for us?
12. How would people communicate in a perfect world?
13. How do you make a tuna sandwich?
14. My wife and I are going on vacation, where would you recommend?
15. You are a head chef at a restaurant and your team has been selected to be on Iron Chef. How do you prepare your team for the competition and how do you leverage the competition for your restaurant?
16. Estimate how many windows are in New York.
17. What’s your favorite song? Perform it for us now.
18. Calculate the angle of two clock pointers when time is 11:50.
19. Have you ever stolen a pen from work?
20. Pick two celebrities to be your parents.
21. What kitchen utensil would you be?
22. If you had turned your cell phone to silent, and it rang really loudly despite it being on silent, what would you tell me?
23. On a scale from one to ten, rate me as an interviewer.
24. If you could be anyone else, who would it be?
25. How would you direct someone else on how to cook an omelet?

Should recruiters and hiring managers ask their next candidates anything off that list? The jury is split. Some hiring experts recommend throwing a curve ball like those to see how well candidates think on their feet and answer questions they definitely haven’t rehearsed.

But on the other hand, some say that asking questions that have nothing at all to do the job is a big waste of everyone’s time.

What do you think? Let us know your opinion in the comments section below.

Tags: hiring, interview, questions