How to respond to interview questions that are on topic but very bizarre, and asking for clarification doesn't help

Question

I had an interview for an IT position with the government and it had some very bizarre questions:

• list components of software and hardware (do you just want a random list?)
• define spam and firmware (I can see this one but how long of a definition are you looking for i.e. just a sentence?)
• list common IT problems (this is subjective depending on the work place. Would it make sense to ask a developer "what problems do you face as a developer" when he's applying to a new company and doesn't know which tools they use yet. For example if I worked at a software lab maybe the common problems would have to do with IDEs, but I don't know if I will be supporting software developers in this job so...)
• Give an explicit story of working with someone difficult and what you did (I've heard of this but they kept asking for personal details which made me uncomfortable, like what exactly the other person said that was offensive)
• an employee reported difficulty with a program that he installed by himself. What do you do? (this has a lot of variables: is it against policy for a user to install a program himself? was he told to do so by his boss? is the program pirated? does the company have licences for the program? does the program appear to be for work or for recreation?)

A lot of these questions needed more information than what was given but when I asked they didn't specify much. For example the first one seemed like they just wanted me to list random hardware and software and when I asked to clarify they said "what parts are needed for a computer to run".

Also the last question I tried to answer in general but they kept asking for give specific details. I felt uncomfortable about this, for example didn't want to say the actual swear words used etc.

How should I have responded to such questions? After I gave a description they kept saying "anything else?" did that mean I should've kept adding more? All but one time they only asked "anything else?" once but the one time they asked it like 5 times.

Answer 1

RualStorage provided a good breakdown of the questions, so I will try to provide the reasons of why the interview is conducted this way. I am assuming this was for a US Government job, or a government that has similar rules for interviews. I worked for the US Federal Government, and conducted many interviews in this fashion. The US Federal Government is extremely concerned about fairness in the hiring and promotion process. To this end interviews are required to be made as equal as possible, this means that each candidate should be provided with the same information, asked the exact same questions, given the same length of time for the interview, and the interviews should all be conducted in the same manner (e.g. all in person, over the phone, or video conference). Each member of the panel scores each candidates answer for each question (typically right after the interview finishes). After all interviews are completed they panel members need to reach consensus on a selection.

While the written policies are not this strict this is a simple mechanism for ensuring that there is little basis for any type of discrimination lawsuit.

My advice to anyone interviewing with the Government is to be prepared to give lengthy answers. One of the key things is to keep in mind the mandatory and desirable criteria from the job posting while answering the questions. From a strategy standpoint keep in mind the Situation, Task, Action, Result (STAR) format for answering questions.

Answer 2

Most of these seem reasonable enough... Let's break them down and see what might be going on...

List components of software and hardware

This is clearly a poorly worded or idea of a question as it's more confusing than beneficial... Do they want to see if you just know a wide range of bits and pieces, really deep knowledge about how everything works, together, perhaps the question was actually intended to be confusing just to see how you handle confusion.

Define spam and firmware

This question actually isn't bad, it's just gauging if you can explain something technical clearly. Spam being any for of communication that is undesirable, firmware being software written to / controlling hardware.

List common It problems

Perhaps vague, but not a bad question. It might even be intentionally non-specific to see what sort of things you see as problems in IT. Some problems are technical failing hardware, maintenance plans, infrastructure issues. Others are administrative. Most people are better at one more so than the other which will likely affect their response.

Give an explicit story of working with someone difficult and what you did

This is a rather normal question, different wording, but normal. The goal here is seeing how you handled a difficult user. Hopefully the swearing was the user being unreasonable and not you, otherwise I'd gloss over that part. You could also say "the user colorful in their choice of language" or similar. The message gets across without actually needing to drop any F bombs.

•an employee reported difficulty with a program that he installed by himself. What do you do?

This one isn't bad. They've provided a scenario you have to explain what you would do in other words what you think is reasonable coarse of action. Either this is an issue they've had problems with our have established practices with, but in the end they want to make sure you're reasonable in how you handle and resolve it. Do you enforce policy? Do you let things slide? Do you handle yourself as a professional? Do you create more problems in resolving the issue than you fix?

Summary

In the end the listing software / hardware is the only really odd question. It comes across as something to catch you off guard or poorly thought out. Though probably not very effective.

What should you do?

Remember when responding to the questions you need to be honest, but you also need to think what they're trying to figure out. Often questions are asked for reasons other than the question itself. Some questions are actually intended to put you off balance to see how you handle it, because how you perform when something goes to hell is usually more important than how you perform when everything is in good order.

When you can't answer

When a question is so vague or confusing that you simply can't answer you can ask for clarification. If that doesn't get you anywhere you can apologize that you don't understand and offer to answer what you believe they intended to figure out. Even if it's a blind guess that's wrong it's better than nothing.