Title: Leaning Tower of Pisa Brainteaser
General Information about Item:
- Verbal Folklore, Riddles
- English
- Country where Item is from: US
Informant Data:
- Thomas Ware is a Dartmouth Senior from Wisconsin and a government major, involved in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and IM sports. His father is a Dartmouth alumni who currently works at a company that does credit scores for smaller companies. After graduation, he will be working for a consulting firm in Boston, a position he got by undergoing corporate recruiting. Thomas got involved in corporate recruiting during Sophomore Summer when he went along to a few events and information sessions with his fraternity brothers.
Contextual Data:
- Cultural Context: During the second part of corporate recruiting interviews, candidates are often asked difficult questions (brainteasers) to evaluate how they approach problems and how they logically solve unexpected tasks. Because much of consulting revolves around problem-solving and working under pressure, brainteasers are aimed at testing these skills.
Item:
- Thomas received this question during a consulting firm interview: “how many donuts fit in the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”
Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):
Transcript of Associated File:
- “I was given and I practiced this brainteaser — How many donuts fit in the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
Informant’s Comments:
- Thomas commented that for brain teasers, the questions were never really about how close you got to the actual answer, but how you broke down and approached the problem because interviewers were more interested in the thinking process and the logical approach rather than how close an estimate was.
Collector’s Comments:
- Like riddles, corporate recruiting brain teasers serve the purpose of testing the wit of the interviewee and also forces the candidates to push cognitive boundaries of what is considered “normal knowledge” to best answer the question. Although they lack the metaphorical component of true riddles, the cognitive and testing purpose these brain teasers serve are similar.
Collector’s Name: Aime Joo
Tags/Keywords:
- Corporate recruiting folklore, Verbal folklore, Brainteasers, Leaning Tower of Pisa