The Most Interesting Interview Questions

For the past two years, I have been working for a terrific private equity owned company called Abra Auto Body and Glass. Not sexy sounding, I know, but one of the few industries that have evaded the digital revolution. So, it sounded very sexy to me. Afterall, how many industries that are $47 Billion strong in the US alone, have this untapped opportunity?

Our amazing CEO, the incomparable Ann Fandozzi, brought in an over-experienced team of leaders to hit the ground running and tackle the challenge in early 2017. A year and a half later, we had totally turned the company’s financials around, transformed the customer experience, nurtured the corporate culture and grew it by +50%. This set us up to merge with one of the other two large, privately held, collision companies. So, in February of 2019, we closed on a merger with Caliber Collision and are now the only national collision company in the US. We have over 1000 locations, 20,000 employees and are growing. The trouble is, when companies merge, you only need one CEO, one CFO, one COO, one CIO, one CMO…you get the picture. It is a high-class problem, no doubt, but one that left the Abra executive team in the position of supporting the integration of these two companies and helping to transition the operations and efforts as smoothly as possible. That time is about up so I find myself in interview mode.

I have been fortunate to have had several calls from interested companies and have been exercising my interviewing muscles again. It is like riding a bike but I have taken pleasure in noting some of the more interesting and unique interview questions I have been asked and thought I would share some of those here. Hopefully, you’ll find them as entertaining and informative as I have found them.

Interesting Q1: What do you think is the most important/impactful invention in history?

Luckily for me, I had a ready answer as I have given many many talks on the History of Storytelling and include in this talk, what I believe to be the most important invention in Storytelling history…and that is The Guttenberg Printing Press.

This was the invention that first allowed mankind to share information at scale. Prior to this, oral history was largely the mode of communication with the written word being shared in small circles or only when passed around individually.

Q2: What is an idea that is generally accepted as truth that you disagree with?

This one was more difficult for me. I dug into my philosophical history and came up with an idea drawn from Mr. Maslow. You probably know what Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs is.

So, my idea was that people are not born good or bad. When people’s basic needs are met, they are able to “be good/do good”. When these needs are not met, people are largely driven by their survival instincts. Now, I am certain that there are many arguments for or against, but in an interview setting, spur of the moment, without Google there to help you out, what would you have said?

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on these questions and the most interesting questions you have been asked in interviews. Please share!