Category Archives: Riddles

Riddles and Brainteasers during Interviews

General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre
    • Verbal Folklore: Riddles and Brainteasers
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: US

Informant Data:

  • Informant is a Dartmouth Student in the Class of 2017. He is from Westchester, NY and is studying Economics with minors in Public Policy and Environmental Sciences. He is involved in multiple extracurriculars on campus, including Dartmouth Business Journal, Varsity Swimming, Dartmouth Investment and Philanthropy Program and Policy Research Shop. He has gone through the corporate recruiting process Fall 2016.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: This folklore was collected in person on audio recording during an one-on-one interview during the Fall 2016 Dartmouth corporate recruiting season.
  • Cultural Context: Informant is a Senior studying Economics at Dartmouth – a typical participant of corporate recruiting as mostly Juniors and Seniors in Economics go through recruiting. Informant has worked at a large bank prior to interview, but the job was not obtained through the corporate recruiting process.

Item:

  • Interview riddles and brainteasers are frequently shared among participants of corporate recruiting. Both consulting and finance interviews occasionally have one or two riddles or brainteasers. These riddles and brainteasers are frequently shared among participants of corporate recruiting because riddles and brainteasers are harder to prepare, as there are so many variants. These riddles and brain teasers are meant to the interviewees thinking and analytical abilities.
  • Some common brain teasers include:
    • How many heart beats does a human have in a year?
    • If you could have infinite lengths of rope, how would you cross the Grand Canyon?

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

  • Audio file not included because informant wished to remain anonymous.

Transcript of Associated File:

Informant’s Comments:

  • NA

Collector’s Comments:

  • NA

Collector’s Name: Emily MA

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Lore, Riddles, Brainteasers, Interviews, Corporate Recruiting