US
The question
During an interview for a position as an assistant product manager in cash management at a big four Australian bank, a candidate was asked the following question:
How would you go about calculating how many cricket balls are sold in Australia per year?
The candidate’s reply
I think I started with: “Errr, do you mean whether I would survey shops to see how many they sell?”. To which the interviewer replied: “No I mean calculate it for me right now. You can use paper”.
My answer was roughly: In the town where I grew up the population was about 15,000. There were 12 grades of cricket – from juniors to seniors, men’s and women’s – and about five clubs, so about 60 teams.
The Australian population is about 40 million. So assuming my home town and the country as a whole have a similar ratio of cricketers to population, that means about 160,000 teams in Australia.
Then assuming a team has a couple of practice balls at the start of a 12-week season, and a new ball for each game, that’s about 15 balls per team per season. So my answer was 160,000 x 15 = 2.4 million cricket balls.
How he would have responded in hindsight
I was happy with the logic of my response overall, but some of my assumptions were a bit off. For starters, I would have liked to have got the population of Australia right! Anyway, it wasn’t a disaster. I was hired.
How would YOU have answered?
Use the comments box below to suggest a better response to the interview question above.
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All these questions are crap…and the idiots that ask them in interviews have no IQ, no brains and very little else in their masculine anatomy.
I don’t think these questions are crap, just testing the interviewee. Realistically I would prefer a curve ball questions as opposed to your standard ‘I can be bothered’ questions like; “tell me the most difficult thing you have overcome at work and how?” or ” tell me what you consider to be your weakness”.
So the population of Australia is 40million? really. I think all involved in that interview should have been sacked.
I think you may have got the population wrong, is it not 22.6m?
I got asked a very simlar question my interview. “How many people would be playing cricket in Australia at this moment ?” I think when an interviewer asks such questions …. they are not looking for the right numbers from you but looking at your logic and approach of reaching at a figure.
Question like this are great IMO. Problem solving questions show a great more about a person than stuff recited from memory.
I’ve seen so many people good in one environment becaise they are familiar in it, but dumped in fresh surroundings they drown.
I think one improvement in the above answer would have been to adjust for balls being recycled in a following season
How much money would be saved on ink by all publising houses in the US if the ‘W’ in ‘George W Bush’ was never printed. ie always printed as ‘George Bush’ instead?
I would have thrown them out on the spot.
How can you not know the population of Australia??
A good candidate should know the population figures of all developed countries and most developing countries.
Terrible.
I totally agree, answering a questing like that means that you can solve a hypothecial maths problem. How does it show your overall personality is beyond me.
I think they are just time wasting bullshit artists, who really cares! Just get on with it and ask relevant questions of the candidates experience, not expect them to answer crap like this.
the aim is to recruit ppl who can bs ?? … unless u knew someone who works for cricket ball manufacturer.
IMHO these types of questions are an excellent way of evaluating whether a candidate can validate information on the fly. One of the biggest challenges in the workforce is trying to make decisions on limited information or decide whether something is worhtwhile gathering additional information on. Skills like this enable staff to quality check the information they have received, rather than relying on blind faith, digging deeper when something appears questionable.