Name your dinosaur - get that dream job

So what kind of dinosaur are you? Photo / Wayne Drought

So you're fully prepped for the interview, wearing a new suit and your CV is beyond reproach.

But to win that dream job you must work out what sort of dinosaur you are.

Prospective employers are increasingly using 'extreme interviewing' techniques which include questions such as: "If you were a dinosaur, what would you be?"

Although they say the way the candidate handles the question is more important than the actual answer, chances are that if you said you were a Tyrannosaurus rex, you won't be getting the job.

Apparently, the hapless candidate is told: "Aha, so you are a cannibalistic predator preying on the weak, are you?"

Answering diplodocus won't get you much further either. The logic-defying answer to that is: "So you're a sexist?"

The dinosaur tactic, a favourite of City employers because the answer is almost always "T rex", is part of a craze for throwing bizarre questions at candidates to see how they react.

The technique - designed to distinguish the capable candidate from the exceptional at a time when a quarter of recent graduates are unemployed - originated in California's Silicon Valley.

Google, which is based there, is renowned for its intense interview process, with 50-page dossiers sometimes being prepared for a potential employee.

One recent question a recent candidate was asked was: "You are stranded on a desert island. You have 60 seconds to choose people of ten professions to come with you. Who do you choose? Go!"

Computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard prefers questions such as: "If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?" - a reference to the first line of their national anthem, Deutschland Deutschland uber alles.

The idea of extreme interviewing is to see how quickly job-seekers think on their feet and one of its pioneers was the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, who put interviewees through their paces.

Dealing with a candidate he considered dull, Jobs launched into a chicken impression, flapping his arms and clucking to judge his reaction.

David Moyle, a headhunter with the Eximius Group in London, admits he has used the dinosaur question to recruit.

He said: "We are trying to give candidates an opportunity to show their personality, rather than just showing how they perform in an interview."

Genuine questions asked of potential employees include:

"If you were a biscuit, what sort would you be?"

"Name five uses for a stapler, without the staples."

"Name me three Lady Gaga songs."

"With a four-minute hourglass and a seven-minute hourglass, how can you measure exactly nine minutes - without taking longer than nine minutes?"

- DAILY MAIL