A newspaper reporter friend of mine is working on a story about strange and quirky tests that people invent to assess potential job candidates and he is looking for our input.

Here is what he wrote me:

The impetus for the story was some interesting anecdotes that I stumbled across recently: Apparently, when conducting job interviews Supreme Court chief Justice John Roberts puts powdered donuts out in his chambers and for years he had an unspoken policy of looking fondly on any candidate who would take and eat one of the donuts before/during the interview. His reasoning? Justice Roberts said he likes risk takers and if someone is confident and non-deferential enough to eat a powdered donut before such an interview is the type of person who will challenge him and push him intellectually. Another person interviewed said he places the chair in his office where the interviewee will sit awkwardly far from him to see if a candidate is daring enough to move it during the interview. This interviewer too said he thinks his little hidden test tells him something about the confidence level of the interviewee.

These examples are interesting for what they say about how we size people up. We create bizarre tools and makeshift litmus tests to give us information we value, information we think we can’t get from standardized personality tests or questionnaires. It's a timely topic in part because the job market is so utterly glutted right now. Some firms are getting so many resumes that they have resorted to using software to make the first cut.

There are plenty of examples out there of odd questions people ask, pet peeves interviewers have that rule out candidates, or formalized tests that people give to measure aptitude. I'm not interested in those. I'm more interested in the strange, homemade and discreet tests that people create, like the chair and the donuts tests mentioned above.

We were hoping Cockeyed readers might have some snarky, interesting examples to offer.

Please write to this address and I'll forward your input. Thanks!