Simon Anderson, CEO of DreamHost, a web hosting provider, says there's only one question he asks to determine what motivates candidates:
"Tell me about the first experience in your life when you realized that you had the power of change or the power to do something meaningful."
"It’s open-ended. Some people might tell the story of when they were five and there was some incident and they had to take more responsibility for their baby brother or sister," he
tells The New York Times.
"Maybe it was from their teenage years: 'Something bad was going to happen at school and I stood up for this friend of mine and all of a sudden I felt self-empowered to do things.' I think that’s really important. If someone sits there and they’re stumped, I think that tells you something."
"I think there’s this big shift under way in business where you have to respect the fact that people are going to forge their own path, and they’re going to be motivated by different things and they’re going to want to do meaningful things," he says. "So in our business, finding people who are equally motivated and believe in that is really important."
Have you ever been asked something like that? What were some of the more difficult interview questions you've been asked before?