Loose Cannon: Of Questionable Use

Last month, The New York Times ran an article on questions posed to business school graduates by investment banking firm recruiters. The questions were designed more to gauge applicants' reactions than test their knowledge. They ranged from the unknowable ("How many gas stations are in the United States?") to those requiring lateral thinking ("If you could stack up enough pennies to reach the top of the Empire State Building, could you fit them all into a room?").

They also included some personality-determining brain teasers, such as "How much would you pay to play the coin-toss game?" and "What is the most controversial belief you hold?"

My own answers to the above are, respectively, "Irrelevant: Only six will give you the key to the men's room"; "Maybe not in this room, but in the office I ultimately aspire to, quite easily"; and "Fifty bucks. Right now." (I own a double-headed quarter, which I plan on carrying should I ever have an interview with an investment banking firm.)

As for the "controversial belief" question, my answer would be "I believe questions like that should not be illegal under the EEOC. Pity they are. When do I start?"

These questions, quite frankly, are dumb. But the idea is intriguing. What might a potential DM employer ask job candidates to gain insight into their thinking?

Some suggestions:

1. What two-word search engine phrase best describes you, and how much -- per click -- would you be willing to bid for it?

2. Within a 10-year period, a customer receives enough catalogs to cover the entire Great Wall of China in papier-mâché. However, all the mailings to this customer are profitable. If we continue to send her catalogs, what larger object will she be able to cover?

3. You're a list broker. You have two sources of names for a multimillion-piece mailing. The compiled source offers better targeting, a lower price and favorable net-net terms. The response list source is giving a free ski vacation to the broker who rents the most names. Aspen or Gstaad?

4. Which of the following currencies would you least like to lose in a poker game: The equivalent of $10,000 in pre-dot-com-bust online currencies such as Flooz or Beenz; 100,000 24-month-old airline frequent-flier miles on the brink of expiration; or 1 million pre-licked S&H Green Stamps?

5. Which one of the above currencies would you be most comfortable offering a disgruntled customer via e-mail? Over the phone? In person at an airline counter just after a five-hour-late flight has been officially canceled?

6. Randomly choose three letters and use them to create a trademarkable customer relationship management technique that's not currently in use.

6a. Could you repeat that?

6b. Er, have you told anyone else about this?

6c. How familiar are you with intellectual property laws?

7. Consider the board game Monopoly. Name three ways play could be improved using direct response marketing.

8. Same question as before, except the game is checkers.

To respond to this column, please contact richard.levey@penton.com