Below, we've provided some sample off-the-wall questions. The first group are questions submitted by readers, along with the answers they used. Be aware that studying this list of questions may be no help at all if you're ever asked a weird question because you may be asked something totally different from any of these questions. The point is to expect the unexpected, and looking over these questions will at least give you the flavour of what might be asked and enable you to do a little out-of-the-box thinking about how you might respond when you're asked a question as strange as these:

Shelley Feakes, resource navigator at Queens Career Resource Center in Nova Scotia, Canada, was asked: 'If aliens landed in front of you and, in exchange for anything you desire, offered you any position on their planet, what would you want?'

'I thought about this question for a minute,' Feakes recalls, 'then responded: 'First I would want to go change my clothes since the aliens just scared the crap out of me! ... then I would ask for a job as Chief Navigator so I could enjoy coming to Earth and scaring the crap out of other human beings.'

Explains Feakes: 'My strategy was this: I first thought that it was a psychological question, that the interviewer was trying to see how far up the ladder I desired to be ... then I thought twice and decided that I would express my creativity and go for an answer that was just as odd as the question itself. It must have worked ... I got the job!'

Another reader was not happy about the odd questions she was asked. 'I was asked who my heroes were and how I felt about affirmative action in the same interview. Talk about loaded questions! Looking back, it was obvious that I would be required to be very [politically correct] and think just like them to work there. If I hadn't been a single mother and desperate for work, I would have answered, 'I think this interview is over.'' She doesn't remember how she actually did answer, but notes that 'Those questions have nothing to do with the ability to do a job and are out of line. I'm probably lucky they didn't hire me because I'm sure I would have been unhappy there.'

Still another reader was asked 'if you could be any animal in the jungle what would it be?' He answered: 'I would be a gorilla so I could be the king of the jungle because it is survival of the fittest in the jungle. I would also be able to climb trees well and get a bird's eye view of what is going on so I could stay abreast of what was happening in the jungle scene.' The reader felt the employer liked his response because he got a second interview. 'I thought it was a pretty good answer myself,' he observed.

More off-the-wall 'wild card' job interview questions:

• If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you be?
• If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play the lead role as you?
• If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?
• If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
• If you had to be shipwrecked on a deserted island, but all your human needs - such as food and water - were taken care of, what two items would you want to have with you?
• If you had six months with no obligations or financial constraints, what would you do with the time?
• If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?
• If you could have dinner with anyone from history, who would it be, and why?
• If you could compare yourself with any animal, which would it be and why?
• If you were a type of food, what type of food would you be?
• If you won $20 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money?
• If you were a salad, what kind of dressing would you have?
• How do I rate as an interviewer?
• If you were a car, what kind would you be?
• Who do you admire the most and why?
• In the news story about your life, what would the headline say?