Going for a job interview is nerve-racking at the best of times, and tech giant Google has become notorious for asking fiendishly tough questions.

The company used to ask head-scratching questions such as “How many piano tuners are there in the world?” and “How many golf balls does it take to fill a school bus?”

But some of the riddles were so tough they have now been banned from the interview process.

Recruiter Impact Interview has compiled a list of 140 questions candidates have reported being asked at interviews for various roles at Google, many of which have now been dropped from the process.

One of the tough teasers that candidates used to be asked was: How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

The riddle is known as a Fermi problem, named after the physicist Enrico Fermi who was known for his ability to make good calculations with very little information or even none.

Its purpose is to test a candidate’s approximation skills as well as their ability at dimensional analysis.

The puzzle is solved by multiplying a series of estimates to get to the right answer. So a candidate would have to estimate factors such as how many households have a piano and how often they are tuned to figure out how many piano tunings take place a year.

They then need to calculate the average working hours of a piano tuner and the number of jobs they carry out.

The number of piano tunings that take place per year divided by the tunings done by per piano tuner per year should yield the answer.

As well as questions involving calculation and physics, Google used to ask would-be employees to solve logic puzzles.

A logic puzzled candidates were given to solve was: How many times a day do the hands of a clock overlap?

The hands overlap once an hour, but 11 times in 12 hours and 22 times in a day. This is because the overlap at 12 has already been accounted for.

即便是最好的情形，求职面试也会非常伤神费脑，而科技巨头谷歌的面试题则因其奇葩刁钻异常出名。

谷歌公司曾问过一些令人头痛不已的面试问题，例如，“世界上有多少位钢琴调音师？”以及“一辆校车里最多能塞多少颗高尔夫球？”。

但因有些谜题太过于荒谬古怪，谷歌公司现在已不再将其纳入面试流程中。

招聘面试小册子汇编140道题集中了应聘人员在面试谷歌各种职位时回答过的问题。目前其中许多问题已从面试流程中剔除。

应聘者们曾经回答过这样一个令人啼笑皆非的难题：“全世界有多少位钢琴调音师？”

这类谜题被称为“费米问题”，命名来自物理学家恩里科·费米，他之所以声名远扬是因为他能够在少量的给定信息甚至没有信息的情况下进行运算。

费米问题意在考察应聘者的估算能力以及多维度分析能力。解决费米问题的方法在于通过一系列估算而接近正确答案。因此，应聘者需要考量一些因素，诸如：拥有钢琴的家庭户数，此类家庭进行钢琴调音的频次等，从而得出每年有多少次的钢琴调音。随后，应聘者们需要估算出钢琴调音师的平均工作时长以及工作量。

因此，用每年所有家庭需要进行钢琴调音的次数除以每年每位钢琴调音师的工作量，答案就此诞生。

谷歌公司的面试问题不仅提及数学运算与物理学方面，也曾让其潜在雇员解决逻辑难题。

一天中，时钟的时针和分针会重合几次？这是应聘者被要求回答的一个逻辑难题。时针和分针每小时重叠一次，但在12小时内会重叠11次，一天之内重叠22次。这是因为在12时位置的指针重合已经算过了。

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

   【伤脑筋的】 shāngnǎojīn de nerve-racking producing great anxiety, tension, or irritation

    【重合】chónghé overlap lie over and partly cover something