Strange Questions and Comments in IT Interviews

During interviews at an IT company, you can hear unexpected things – from offers to take a lie detector test to comments about your personal life. We have collected stories of five specialists who have encountered such situations or observed them from the outside.

“What is your zodiac sign?”

Evgeniya Logoshenko

SMM specialist of the international B2B marketplace BirdsBuild

In 2021, I applied for a job as an SMM specialist at one of the Moscow IT companies. I completed a test task and was invited to an online interview.

HR introduced me to the director, and the usual interview began. At the end, HR joined in, and it was a block of “creative questions.” They started with my zodiac sign. I didn't like it right away, because it's strange to evaluate an employee by their date of birth. I answered that my sign is Pisces, and HR's face changed. She said that Pisces are “inactive and unmotivated employees,” and asked: “Have you ever noticed this in yourself?”

Her next weird question was, “If you were an animal, what kind would you be and how does that relate to your job?” I looked at the manager, hoping he would intervene. But he just looked at me, clearly waiting for an answer. At that moment, I realized the company wasn’t right for me, and I ended the interview myself.

“Would you like to take a lie detector test?”

Kirill Smirnov

PHP developer at ITSpace

The strangest question I was asked at an interview was: “Would you mind if we paid for your ticket to Moscow and you took a polygraph test with the security service?” When I asked why this was necessary, the recruiter replied: “Well, what if you are a drug addict, a gambler, or another addict and at any moment you deceive our client?” I politely declined the technical interview and made a decision in favor of another company.

“Why are fuel elements needed in the RBMK reactor?”

Konstantin Levushkin

Head of Frontend Development at SimbirSoft

We implement turnkey IT projects (outsourcing) and strengthen teams (outstaffing) for other businesses. Therefore, as a manager, I have to review many interviews of my employees for projects.

One of the strangest questions in such an interview became the subject of a heated discussion. A potential client from the machine learning industry asked a frontend developer: “Why are fuel rods needed in an RBMK reactor?”

Despite the fact that we implement high-tech projects of any complexity, and the specialist has six years of experience in development, the question about nuclear physics turned out to be beyond his capabilities. He did not pass the interview.

We discussed the issue with the team and found a catch. TVELs (fuel elements) are not used in RBMK (high-power channel reactors), but in VVER (water-moderated water reactors). RBMKs use rods with ceramic uranium. The question turned out to be incorrect. Perhaps the customer decided to test the specialist's horizons in this way, but history is silent about this.

“We don't need the decisive ones”

Konstantin Ivanov

Frontend Developer at ITSpace

At one interview, I was rejected after I told them I was leaving the Russian Federation. They told me something like: “Everything is fine with you, relevant skills, impressive work experience. But we realized that you are a decisive person, one day you will pack your things and leave Russia, and we don't need people like that.”

“Explain this using football as an example.”

Andrey Rogalenko

Leading technology expert at Sber

It was the summer of 2018. All of Russia and the world were living for the World Cup. Meanwhile, I was interviewing for a database developer position at a Moscow bank. Among other unexpected questions, perhaps the strangest one was: “Explain the principle of an autonomous transaction using football as an example.” Why football was the example is still a mystery to me.

An autonomous transaction is an independent operation within a parent transaction that is committed regardless of the successful execution of the parent transaction. This design is mainly used for logging and has nothing to do with football. I gave a delayed card as an example: when during an attack by a team, one of the defenders of the opposing team grossly violates the rules, but the referee does not stop the game until the end of the episode. Then, regardless of the outcome of the episode, he gives the offender a yellow (or red) card.

In the end, I didn’t go to work at this bank, although I received an offer.

Share in the comments – have similar situations happened to you and how did you react to them?

You can learn how to manage IT teams and correctly assess the skills of specialists for your projects on the program “Creation and management of IT products” online master's programs from RANEPA and Skillfactory. Students will learn how to organize employees and distribute tasks, understand technical requirements and make decisions at different stages of development.