Story from: http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2013/12/03/preparing-for-interview-questions-that-dont-have-a-right-answer

Imagine that you are in a job interview , the first thing you encounter is a purposefully unpredictable off-the-wall question like: "A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?" or "How many windows are in New York City?" According to Glassdoor's Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions survey, these questions were actually asked during interviews at Clark Construction and Bain & Company.

Other times, you'll encounter the same old, same old questions you've come to expect: "Tell me about yourself," "What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" and "Why did you leave your last job?" Still other times you will be asked behavior-based questions that classically begin with "Tell me about a time when…" or "How would you do…?"

Regardless of which kind of approach is taken, the whole idea behind these questions for which there is no one right answer is less about the actual content but rather to discern aspects about your personality, work style, values, perspective and how your mind works. These are all things one can't reliably ask directly.

Nonetheless, you can anticipate legitimate issues of any employer's concern, prepare by crafting stories in response to these questions and display yourself in the best possible light.

1. Do you show up for work? On one very basic level, an employer wants to know that you live within a reasonable commuting distance so that you are able to arrive on time and not be mentally fatigued. But on a deeper level, be prepared to demonstrate with your answer that you actually care about your work, take it seriously and are psychologically engaged as opposed to just physically present.

Do you immediately accept the challenge of figuring out how many windows are in New York? Do you relish the opportunity and show how you would dig in to go about finding a reasonable approximation? Can you talk about how in the past you jumped into a job or project with both feet first?

2. Are you flexible? Prepare stories that demonstrate you can adapt to changing circumstances and needs. Can you speak about how you have adjusted your schedule, come in early and left late or adapted to the work style of a new boss or different team members? Are you willing to shift your priorities and work style to meet the needs of others?

What stories can you tell to demonstrate that you can go with the flow to help get done whatever needs to happen?

3. Are you ambitious? Few people can actually predict what they will be doing five years from now. But can you talk about the overall arc of your career up to this point? Do the transitions from one position to the next over the course of your professional life make sense, or are they happenstance? Can you articulate the general direction in which you want to move?

What have you done to propel your career forward up to this point? And, are you relying on what you did in 1985 and how you did it to get hired today? Do you think that the skills and knowledge you have will get you by for the long haul, or what are your plans to keep up with the latest and greatest information, innovations, trends and technology?

Put simply: can you articulate a vision of what you want to accomplish in the job for which you are applying, and beyond? And can you weave this vision into the narrative you tell?

4. How well do you communicate? It is rare to find a job description that doesn't include strong communications skills among the requirements, and few are the résumés that don't claim that those skills. Most interviewers will judge your level of intelligence and your attitude by the way you speak and convey your own personal story.

Often, interview questions are purposefully open-ended to see how you will respond when challenged. Do you summon relevant facts and stories from your past, or do you meander through an answer without dealing with the concern of your interviewer? Do you engage through dialogue, open body language and clarity of thought? Do you understand when enough has been said and it is time to stop speaking?

When you take the time to step back from the interview process to think about the underlying concerns of any employer, you can gain valuable perspective. Then you can go about effectively crafting your own stories with these concerns, and thereby increase your odds of hearing the words that every job hunter craves: "You're hired."

Happy hunting!

Name:  Yohka Tanaka

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Japan International Food for the Hungry

Major(s)/Minor(s): Interdisciplinary Studies

Expected Graduation Year: 2014

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service- learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

I got my intern site, Japan International Food for the Hungry (JIFH), by typing "npo kiga (meaning "hunger" in Japanese)" in a search box, getting the site's website, and contacting them if they provide an internship opportunity, even though I found on their website saying: "At this time, there are no volunteer opportunities available." I just ignored it and asked them if there are internship opportunities available. The result is: I got an internship opportunity. 

What I'm doing is:
1) Learn about JIFH (what it does, how it works, etc)
2) Inform myself about what has happened in areas where JIFH have supported (9 countries in Africa, 7 countries in Asia, and 1 country in South America).
3) Office work (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, sorting documents), including translation between English and Japanese.
4) Event planning, preparing, and facilitating
5) Summarize information to make a report, which will be read by other NPOs, FAO Japan office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affair (Japan).
At the very beginning, I spent most of my time for learning, and then I've moved on to the next step: JIFH will ask me to write a report, plan/ prepare/ facilitate events, or join meetings for the World Food Day.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

Specifically, I was so excited at the meeting for the World Food Day. People from FAO Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affair, Table For Two, Second Harvest Japan, and six other NPOs working on food-related issues came by and talked about what we can do in Japan to support World Food Day. I was just listening to what they said, but it was pleasure to be there and to get their business card.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

Face-to-face talk with people whose work is my dream job.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Don't give up. Actively seek an opportunity.

As I described how I got my internship opportunity...
(copied and pasted from the question #1)
I got my intern site, Japan International Food for the Hungry (JIFH), by typing "npo kiga (meaning "hunger" in Japanese)" in a search box, getting the site's website, and contacting them if they provide an internship opportunity, even though I found on their website saying: "At this time, there are no volunteer opportunities available." I just ignored it and asked them if there are internship opportunities available. The result is: I got an internship opportunity. 

How do you see your experience as meaningful? This might involve skills you’ve gained, information you’ve learned, mentors you’ve connected with, or projects you’ve completed.

I want to eradicate hunger. On UMBC campus, I established Table For Two UMBC (Table For Two is a Japanese NPO simultaneously addressing under-nutrition and over-nutrition). My experience as an intern at Japan International Food for the Hungry will directly contribute to my future, which is to establish a NPO to eradicate hunger. I'm feeling how my intern site is operated and connecting with people working at NPOs and the government that are interested in World Food Day. I feel that everything is meaningful.

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process / the Shriver Center:

Networking: I could meet people and get their contact information, which will be surely used once I could establish my own non-profit organization.

Name:  Wei Gao

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: University of Maryland, Baltimore - School of Medicine

Major(s)/Minor(s):  Biological Sciences

Expected Graduation Year: 2014

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service- learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

Currently, my project seeks to determine the effect of Msi-1 on hPC1 expression in HEK cells. PC1 is an enzyme that has been shown to have proinsulin and proglucagon cleavage activity. Therefore, Msi-1 may play a key role in future research on regulating glucose levels for diabetic patients.

My work involves transfecting HEK cells with Msi-1 and comparing the levels of secreted protein and retained mRNA levels using enzymatic assays and western blots.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

I love working and interacting with people who are so passionate not only about conducting their own research, but about helping me learn more about research as well. Everyone is always so eager and willing to give up their time to explain a foreign molecular concept to me or to help guide me through a new experimental protocol. Their extensive knowledge and unwavering patience day in and day out has helped me become a better biologist and a better scientist.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Do it! Contact the principal investigators directly and show them that you’re interested in their research by reading a few of their papers. During the interview, bring up any questions that you have about the methods they used or the results they found.

How do you see your experience as meaningful? This might involve skills you’ve gained, information you’ve learned, mentors you’ve connected with, or projects you’ve completed.

Being relatively new to the research field, I find that every day in the lab is filled with learning experiences. Without a doubt, this experience has been meaningful to me because I have learned so much about science and scientific methods. However, more than that, I hope this research experience can be meaningful to others as well. Perhaps my results will one day be useful for designing a better treatment for diabetes.

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process / the Shriver Center:

I love the idea that I am exploring uncharted territory with my work. Since Msi-1 has not been very well-researched, often times there are questions no one (not even Google!) knows the answer to. My job is to ask those questions and find those answers.

Name:  Kevin Johnson

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Domino Sugar Refinery

Major(s)/Minor(s):  Mechanical Engineering

Expected Graduation Year: 2015

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service- learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

At Domino Sugar I am an intern in the Packaging Department. This is the department responsible for the actually packaging of the sugar after it has been refined. The refinery receives raw sugar from all over the world and then works to create many varieties of pure sugar (well 99.95% pure) that is then sold to consumers. The packaging department consists of over 20 lines that package sugar, with weights that range from the 2.8 gram packets people use for coffee and tea to 2,000 lb supersacks that are sold to large food companies. This summer I am working on many different projects. Some of the larger projects include an audit of the checkweighers on each line (checkweighers are machines that constantly check the weights of the bags or boxes of sugar as they run across the conveyors of the line) and implementing a system that sends this data to a screen that shows graphs and statistics in real time. Another project involves activating a melter tank that is out of operation and connecting it to a larger melter tank 2 floors down. I am also working on designing and implementing a system to reject bad bags of sugar before they reach the unitizers and palletizers provided that they happen to make it past the first set of quality checks. Finally, I am planning and carrying out a project to upgrade a motor in our soft sugar section that has the potential to save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. These are just some of the interesting projects I get to work on every day I come into work. In addition to all this work I get to learn about the world of manufacturing from my extremely knowledgeable coworkers and supervisors.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

I have enjoyed the opportunity to get a glimpse into the world of manufacturing and how engineering is related to this field. I have interned at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center before, and this internship is very different in many ways so it has been a great way to broaden my engineering experience. Being able to work with experienced engineers and learn directly from them has been such a valuable experience. It really demonstrates how what you learn in class relates to real world problems and solutions. Everyone who works here has been extremely kind and helpful, which has made the learning experience even more valuable.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

Like I said before, I have interned at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center before and this internship at Domino Sugar has been very different. The manufacturing process of a privately owned company is much different than working at a government run agency. The knowledge I have gained here has been from a different view of engineering, which has been great for expanding my view of engineering as a whole. I would not say I have learned a lot of things here I could not have gained from another opportunity. I would say it is helpful to gain multiple views of what an engineering degree can lead to in the workforce. And I have definitely gained an appreciation of that from this internship in comparison to my other one.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

I would say do not give up and apply to everything you qualify for. It is not easy to get an internship, especially in this turbulent job market with so many experienced students applying from all over the country. I would also suggest branching out of their comfort zone to gain an appreciation for all there is to learn and experience. It is important to experience a variety of experiences before entering the job market as a new graduate. This will allow you to really narrow down your future plans to what you definitely know you're passionate about.

How do you see your experience as meaningful? This might involve skills you’ve gained, information you’ve learned, mentors you’ve connected with, or projects you’ve completed.

This internship has been great for gaining real world experience. It is a great indicator of how to relate what you learn in class to real world problems and solutions. The projects I work on really challenge me to think outside of the box to devise creative and effective solutions. I am able to work on something new every day, and I also have the unique opportunity to work with a wide array of people. This allows me to network with many different individuals who have given me valuable information and connections for the future.

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process / the Shriver Center:

I would like to wrap up by saying this internship has been a priceless experience that has really allowed me to branch out and learn more about different areas of engineering, especially manufacturing and industry. I would also like to thank the Shriver Center for helping me obtain this opportunity and my supervisor at Domino Sugar, Rush Yelverton (head of Packaging Department), for hiring me and teaching me more than I thought I could ever know about sugar and the manufacturing process.