How Microsoft’s “Impossible” Interview Question Mystify Candidates.

Interviews can be nerve-wrecking enough for every candidate, but how would an interviewer expect job-seekers to cope when a near-impossible question is thrown at them right at the end of the process?

Technology giant Microsoft has allegedly done just that to hopeful jobseekers looking to secure a role at the company.

According to a comment on sharing site Quora, Microsoft has a habit of asking candidates interviewing for a prestigious place on their campus site how to solve a mind-bending algebraic puzzle – the Metro reports.

In an interview for the position, the Microsoft recruiter apparently said to the interviewee: “OK, so one last question. A right triangle has a hypotenuse equal to ten and an altitude to the hypotenuse equal to six. Find the area of the triangle.”

Setting aside the cruelty of launching a geometry question right at the close of an interview, the equation is actually impossible to solve – a triangle with those measurements cannot exist, according to the Metro.

The publication reports the candidate as then saying to the recruiter: “You are just messing up with my brain to make me think otherwise, so that I would commit an error with this trivial question.”

Apparently he was not offered the job.

RECRUITERS, how would you tell candidates to approach an interview situation like this one? What would you coach them to say?