How to handle tough interviews

University of Pennsylvania senior Ariel Horn was interviewing for an entry-level spot with a New York management consulting firm in April 2002 when a curveball brainteaser intended to test her analytical ability caught her off guard.

"How many haircutters are there in the U.S.?" the interviewer asked. Trying to craft a logical reply, Horn became bogged down in irrelevant details and gave a far-fetched estimate of 50 million. "I felt like I was the dumbest person he had interviewed," she says. She didn't get the job - and never found out the number of haircutters.

Everyone gets stumped at times during interviews. Whether you flub a trick question, arrive inadequately prepared or become tongue-tied about something obvious, how you handle such nerve-racking situations may determine if you're shown the door or your new office.

Here are common reasons job hunters become flummoxed by interview queries and what you can do to recover:

Insufficient homework about a potential employer.

A senior executive recently bragged to recruiter Gerard Roche about being such a big gun in the computer industry that he knew the top brass at IBM. "So you must know Mr. Palmisano," Roche said, alluding to Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM's leader.

The job candidate responded, "Oh, I know Paul very well," the Heidrick & Struggles International senior chairman said. "As soon as somebody does something like that, I open the trap door and they're never heard from again."

It's far better to admit that you don't know an answer than to guess wrong. For example, a 22-year-old college graduate failed to research the Fraternal Order of Police in advance of her April 2003 interview for an administrative assistant's post, first scouring its newsletter just moments before being ushered into the president's office.

He asked her to describe the union's size. "I had no clue," she recollects. "I admitted I didn't read up enough beforehand."

Impressed by her candor, the union offered her employment.

Inadequate preparation of your pitch.

Rehearsing your best selling points may not suffice, especially when you're thrown a thorny question designed to assess your expertise. A typical example: "How would you solve our marketing challenge in China?" Request time to reflect rather than spewing a torrent of ill-conceived remarks.

A prospective labor-relations manager ably fielded a negotiating-strategy question during his Armstrong World Industries interview. But he ducked a subsequent one about the negotiations' outcome. He said he needed to check his records and then responded within a day.

"His quick follow-up cemented the deal," says Matt Angello, senior vice president of human resources at the Lancaster, Pa., maker of floor covering, ceilings and cabinets.

A belated realization that you misunderstood a question.

In his memoir "Kitchen Confidential," New York chef Anthony Bourdain describes how he was once close to clinching a Park Avenue steakhouse job when the owner, a Scotsman with a thick brogue, asked: "What do you know about me?"

"It really threw me [because] I had answered every other question perfectly," Bourdain recalls. But he hadn't heard of the owner before, so he replied, "Next to nothing!"

The chef was politely escorted to the door and was halfway down the block before he realized he had misheard. The Scotsman had actually asked, "What do you know about meat?"

Bourdain felt he couldn't go back and correct himself because he had lost his momentum. But you may be able to recover from a similar situation. Repeat a perplexing question out loud and then ask the interviewer, "Do I have this right?" suggests John Kador, author of the book "How to Ace the Brainteaser Interview."

Far-fetched questions that seem irrelevant.

In September, a sales vice president of an apparel maker was supposed to interview Vivian Adams about becoming a national-account business manager who could introduce the company's T-shirts and other casual clothing to military retail outlets.

But the vice president called in sick. Instead, Adams met officials from a different division, which procured fabric for worker uniforms. "They knew nothing about what I was talking about," Adams says. One executive asked her an irrelevant question about uniforms used by Veterans Hospital cafeteria staffers.

"I said, 'I have no idea what they wear,'" Adams recalls. Deftly, she steered the conversation back to her presentation about huge potential sales from military outlets.

On the other hand, being stumped by an interviewer may mean "that's not the right job for you," says Horn, the consultancy applicant who flubbed the haircutter question. Now teaching English in New York, she transformed the travails of her job search into "Help Wanted, Desperately." The autobiographical novel appeared this fall.