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If you interviewed for a job as a customer service representative at one company you may be asked this question: "If you were in the movie 'The Wizard of Oz,' which character do you most relate with and why?"

“Why are manhole covers round?”

Most of us are prepared for standard job interview questions such as “What’s your biggest weakness?” and “Are you a people person?”

But what happens when you get hit with a bizarre and unexpected question from a hiring manager such as:

“How can I get to some gold in the middle of the Amazon in the cheapest way possible?”

This question was asked of a job seeker who interviewed for an associate project manager position at Google in Mountain View, Calif., and it’s No. 1 on the Top 10 list of oddball interview questions asked by hiring managers. The list — compiled by Glassdoor.com, a jobs website where people post their job-hunting experiences — was culled from thousands of questions submitted by job seekers this year. 

While unusual questions have always been part of the interviewing landscape, things have gotten increasingly weird in the employment trenches during the tough economy, said Rusty Rueff, Glassdoor’s career and workplace expert.

With more than 8 percent unemployment, some human resource professionals may think you guys are willing to put up with a lot.

Given that power seems to have shifted from the employee to the employer, Rueff said that some interviewers “take advantage of some people and there can be a little hazing that goes on. That’s not fair, but it is what it is.”

In many cases, he added, employers just want to see how creative you can be, and whether you can think on your feet and not get flustered by a curveball question.

His advice: “Put your best foot forward, roll with the punches and don’t get angry.”

He suggested talking out loud through complex and strange questions so a hiring manager can hear your thought process.

For example, if you’re asked, “Why are manhole covers round?” you should take a deep breath and think to yourself, “Why are they round?” Then, answer the question out loud in several parts if need be, such as: “They’re easier to move, or stake. And they could be round so they can’t fall through the hole.”

Bottom line, he stressed, you can’t prepare for such questions so don’t sweat them.

Or you can just write off hiring managers who ask such crazy questions, suggested communications consultant Mark Jeffries, author of "What's Up With Your Handshake?"

“If you’re asked how to get to a pot of gold in the middle of a jungle it’s time to say bye-bye,” he said, adding that employers are going through so many job candidates these days that they’ve “gone insane. Do you really want to work with a company that approaches employment like that?”

Here’s the rest of Glassdoor's Top10 oddball question list:

• “Tell me the restaurant where you dined last night?” – Ernst & Young consultant candidate (location n/a) 
• “Do you feel you had a normal childhood?” – Gentex mechanical engineer candidate (Zeeland, Mich.) 
• “If you can grow anything on a tree, what would it be?” – Red Frog Events event coordinator candidate (Chicago, Ill.) 
• “If you were in the movie 'The Wizard of Oz,' which character do you most relate with and why?” – National Contract Management Association customer service representative candidate (Ashburn, Va.) 
• “Would you rather be ranked No. 1 in the office and hated by everyone or No. 15 in the office but well-liked?” – ADP outside sales representative candidate (location n/a) 
• “If you were stranded on a deserted island, what three things would you want to have with you?” – Cisco Human Resources manager candidate (location n/a) 
• “Jeff Bezos walks into your office and says you can have a million dollars to launch your best entrepreneurial idea. What is it?" – Amazon product development candidate (Seattle, Wash.) 
• “My clock is nine minutes slow every hour. At noon, it tells the correct time. After how many hours will it again tell the correct time?” – Bloomberg L.P. financial applications engineer candidate (New York, N.Y.) 
• “If you had five red balls that contained four red balls and those red balls contained the original five red balls, then how many sets of sets of balls would I take to have a double set of red balls of varying sizes inside each next largest red ball?” – Goldman Sachs investment banking vice president candidate (New York, N.Y.)

 Have you been asked an odd interview questions recently? If so, what was it?

Bryan Smith / Zuma Press

Sure, a $500 million jackpot is big, but after taxes ... better just tell the hiring manager you would have to think about your options.

The Mega Millions lottery jackpot has hit a record $500 million. Would you quit working if you won it?

If you have a job interview this week, that is hardly an idle question.

The lottery, to be drawn Friday, is on a lot of people’s minds this week, and as a result hiring managers may pull out a doozy of an interview question.

Joyce Lain Kennedy, author of “Job Interviews for Dummies,” calls the lottery question one of the top 10 “prime-time tricky probes” employers lay on workers these days.

When you answer the lottery question -- or any interview question -- you want to leave out any inkling you’re not excited about working hard, no matter what the circumstances.

“Recruiters report that high numbers of job seekers blab negative information without realizing they’re making a farewell address to a job opportunity,” Kennedy said.

Even if you would dump work in a heartbeat following such a windfall, it’s best to keep your feelings to yourself.

Kennedy advised responding along these lines: “While you’d be thrilled to win the lottery, you’d still seek out fulfilling work because working, meeting challenges and scoring accomplishments are what make most people happy, including you.” And don’t forget, she added, to “say it with a straight face.”

Many of you would have no problem with the question, based on an unscientific poll of my 13,000-plus Twitter followers.  When I asked, “Would you stay in your job if you won the lottery?” more than 90 percent offered a resounding “yes.”

Most comments were along the lines of @heatherecoleman’s tweet: "Yes - I love what I do!"

But a few tweeters were contemplating post-winnings career adjustments.  “There would be major course change," said @ed_mcfarland.

For some employers, the best answer to the lottery question is one that’s honest.

“I think it is worse for the candidate to say that they would stay, never leave, etc.,” said David Lewis, president of HR consulting firm OperationsInc. “I’m looking for honesty and real people vs. fakers who are trying to tell me what they think I want to hear.”

Others believe an answer that sounds like you’re looking for any reason to get away from the daily grind is troublesome.

Ken Wisnefski, CEO of Internet marketing firm WebiMax, often asks applicants a lottery-type question: “What would you do with $1 million?”

“I have had one gentleman say, ‘I wouldn’t be here right now,’ and that gentleman did not receive a second interview," he said. "I have, however, heard responsible answers including, ‘I would invest it and grow it to $2 million.’  That response earned a second interview and eventually a position at my company.”

Patricia Siderius, managing director of executive outplacement services at BPI group, offered a good suggestion for an answer to the lottery question: “I would need time to understand how this fortune will or will not change my life.”

A life change is exactly what Benjamin Flynn, 38, a New York City cab driver, is worried about and why he’s not sure he even wants to win millions.

“Money is the root of all evil,” he said. But, he added, if he did win he’d quit his job and go back to school to become a surgical nurse.

Before we all start planning our lives post lottery-winnings, it may be time for a reality check.

Your chances of winning the Mega Millions is 1 in 176 million, according to Jim Lackritz, professor of management information systems at the San Diego State University’s College of Business Administration. “Not a good chance, and not worth it,” he said.

An individual winner of Friday's jackpot could elect to take an immediate cash payout of $359 million before taxes.

It’s college graduation season, which means many young hopefuls are out there trying to snag their first real job.

Here’s a little piece of advice, courtesy of some managers who have apparently seen it all: Don’t let Mom and Dad be part of the process.

A recent survey of managers, conducted by the temp service OfficeTeam, found that managers have witnessed everything from a parent who wanted to sit in on an interview to one who called afterward to find out why their offspring didn’t get the job.

We’re going to go out on a limb and guess that these techniques didn’t necessarily work out so well for the candidate.

Of course parents want to help their kids get the right start in life, and experts say Mom and Dad can and should talk to their kids about career goals, resume writing and interview etiquette. But they should draw the line at things like attending job interviews, negotiating salaries or pressuring pals to give their kids a job.

“It’s important for the teen or young adult to find her own job. If a parent stays out of it, kids learn the difficulty of finding a job, an important discovery," Susan Smith Kuczmarski, author of “The Sacred Flight of the Teenager: A Parent’s Guide to Stepping Back and Letting Go," told msnbc.com career columnist Eve Tahmincioglu in a story on this subject last year.

Here’s what some of the managers said when they were asked about unusual parental behavior.

• "One parent wanted to sit in during the interview."
• "A parent called a politician to push me to hire his son."
• "A mother submitted her daughter's resume on her behalf."
• "A parent called during the interview to try to push me to hire her daughter."
• "A parent came by my desk and told me that he expected his daughter to get preference for a position since he was a manager at the company."
• "A parent called to find out why we did not hire her son and why we felt he was not qualified."

The OfficeTeam survey is based on interviews with more than 1,300 senior managers in the U.S. and Canada, conducted earlier this year.

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