Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/lateral.htm
CAREERS HOME PAGE Working in Kent Careers Events on Campus EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS Teamworking skills Communication skills Leadership skills Time management Creative thinking
Vacancies Postgraduate Study Practice Aptitude Tests CHOOSING A CAREER Work experience
Search
APPLICATIONS & INTERVIEWS Example CVs Competency-based I want to work in ... questions What can I do with my Answers to 150 interview degree in ..? questions What career would suit Practice interviews me? What are your Body language quiz strengths? Coping with Happiness at work unemployment
Find out what you can do with your degree subject here
SKILLS Introduction Timeline Analyse your employability skills Find the skills needed for graduate jobs Which jobs suit my skills? Skills map The top 10 skills employers' want? Skills inventory Progress file How to develop employability skills Analyse your personal styles Competency-based questions Practice aptitude tests The skills game SPECIFIC SKILLS Teamworking Making effective presentations Action planning Decision making Problem-solving Time management Commercial awareness Spoken communication Written Communication Persuading & negotiating Leadership Language skills
1 of 6
23/09/11 17:42
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/lateral.htm
(creative directors name), Googling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too" Of the five directors he targeted, four gave him an interview and two offered him a job. For more examples of lateral thinking in jobhunting see our Creative Careers Search page
Computing skills Striving for excellence Determination Lateral thinking Creative jobhunting Maintaining morale Assertiveness in interviews HOME CHOOSING A CAREER APPLICATIONS AND INTERVIEWS
9. The 60th and 62nd British Prime Ministers of the UK had the same mother and father, but were not brothers. How do you account for this? 10. How many birthdays does a typical woman have? "The fear of making a mistake, of risking an error, or of being told you are wrong is constantly with us. And thats a shame. Making Divide 40 by half and add ten. What is the answer? mistakes is not the same thing as being creative, but if you are To the nearest cubic centimetre, how much soil is not willing to make mistakes, there in a 3m x 2m x 2m hole? then it is impossible to be truly creative. I f your state of mind is Is it legal for a man to marry his widow's sister? coming from a place of fear and risk avoidance, then you will If you drove a coach leaving Canterbury with 35 always settle for the safe passengers, dropped off 6 and picked up 2 at solutionsthe solutions already Faversham, picked up 9 more at Sittingbourne, dropped off 3 at Chatham, and then drove on to arrive applied many times before. in London 40 minutes later, what would the name of Failing is ne, necessary in fact. the driver be? But avoiding experimentation or riskespecially out of fear of A woman lives on the tenth floor of a block of flats. what others may thinkis Every morning she takes the lift down to the ground something that will gnaw at floor and goes to work. In the evening, she gets into your gut more than any the lift, and, if there is someone else in the lift she goes back to her floor directly. Otherwise, she goes to ephemeral failure. A failure is in the past. Its done and over. In the eighth floor and walks up two flights of stairs to fact, it doesnt exist. But her flat. How do you explain this? worrying about what might be A window cleaner is cleaning the windows on the 25th if or what might have been if floor of a skyscraper, when he slips and falls. He is not I had are pieces of baggage wearing a safety harness and nothing slows his fall, you carry around daily. Theyre yet he suffered no injuries. Explain. heavy, and theyll kill your creative spirit. Take chances and The band of stars across the night sky is called the stretch yourself. Youre only "...... Way"? here on this planet once, and for a very short time at that. Why Yogurt is made from fermented ........ not just see how gifted you are?" Daniel Garr - Presentation Zen What do cows drink?
11. Why can't a man living in Canterbury be buried west of the River Stour? 12. 13. 14. 15.
16.
17.
2 of 6
23/09/11 17:42
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/lateral.htm
21. A farmer has 15 cows, all but 8 die. How many does he have left? 22. If a red house is made of red bricks, and a blue house is made of blue bricks, what is a green house made of? 23. 24. I once visited a major pharmaceutical company to discuss their graduate recruitment for marketing. They In what sport are the shoes made of metal? told me that one of the key attributes they looked for was The Zorganian Republic has some very strange Helicopter Ability: the ability customs. Couples only wish to have female children to soar above a problem and to as only females can inherit the family's wealth, so if see all aspects of it, to stand they have a male child they keep having more children back and see the bigger picture, until they have a girl. If they have a girl, they stop the wood rather than the trees. having children. What is the ratio of girls to boys in Creativity involves being able to Zorgania? think outside the box to nd solutions to unpredictable If a plane crashes on the Italian/Swiss border, where problems. This needs logic and do you bury the survivors? analysis, but also the ability to see the big-picture and this If the hour hand of a clock moves 1/60th of a degree involves a creative mind. every minute, how many degrees will it move in an hour?
25. 26.
27. How many hands does the clock of Big Ben have? 28. How many degrees are there between clock hands at 3.15 pm? 29. How many times do the hands of a clock overlap in 24 hours? 30. John's mother has 3 children, one is named April, one is named May. What is the third one named? 31. You are running in a race. You overtake the second person. What position are you in? 32. In the same race, if you overtake the last person, then you are in what position? 33. A cowboy rode into town on Friday, spent one night there, and left on Friday. How do you account for this? 34. How can you throw a ball as hard as you can, and make it stop and return to you, without hitting anything and with nothing attached to it? 35. Using just ONE straight cut, how can you cut a rectangular cake into two equal parts when a rectangular piece has already been removed from it? 36. A man went into a store to buy an item. He asked the assistant: "How much does it cost for one?" The assistant replied 2 pounds, Sir" "And how much for 10?" The assistant replied "4" "How much for 100?" He got the reply "6" What was the man buying? 37. A man and his son were in a car crash. The father was killed and the son was taken to hospital with serious injuries. The examining doctor exclaims: "But, this is my son!". How can this be? 38. There are 23 football teams playing in a knockout competition. What is the least number of matches they need to play to decide the winner? 39. Sarah's father has five daughters. The oldest is called Lala, the next Lele, the third Lili, the fourth Lolo. What is the fifth daughter's name? 40. You have to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires The second is full of tigers that havent eaten in 3 years. The third is full of assassins with loaded machine guns. Which room should you choose? 41. Three of the glasses below are filled with orange juice and the other three are empty. By moving just one glass, can you arrange the glasses so that the full and empty glasses alternate?
3 of 6
23/09/11 17:42
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/lateral.htm
42. Name three consecutive days in English without using the words Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday 43. What's unusual about this paragraph? Just how quickly you can find out what is so funny about it. It looks fairly ordinary and plain that you might think nothing is wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is highly curious though. Study it and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you could just find out.
One student, desperate to get into advertising, had been rejected by the main London agencies, so he decided to try a different approach. He bought some pink envelopes and a small bottle of expensive perfume. He placed his CV in the envelopes and wrote "Private" on the outside. He liberally sprinkled the envelopes with scent and posted them to the senior agency partner in several of the biggest agencies. When it arrived, nobody dared to open the letters and the graduate was offered several interviews - presumably for his daring. Note that, we don't recommend this approach!
Answers:
1. Offer to buy her a drink! The captain was of course a woman. Many airlines are now hot on equal opportunities and a candidate who had difficulty envisaging that an airline captain might be female would not go very far! 2. Your left hand, forearm or elbow. 3. 10p and 1p - the other coin can be a penny! 4. None. NOAH built the Ark 5. White. Only at the North Pole can all four walls be facing South. 6. The match! 7. Holes 8. The outside 9. Churchill was Prime Minister twice, from 1940 to 45 and from 1951 to 55. 10. One 11. Because he is still alive . 12. 90. Dividing by half is the same as multiplying by 2. 13. None - it's a hole! 14. No - because he's dead 15. YOU are the driver! 16. The woman is of small stature and couldn't reach the upper lift buttons. 17. He was cleaning the inside of the windows. 18. Milky Way 19. Milk 20. Water. After the previous two questions, did you answer milk? 21. Eight 22. Glass 23. Horse racing; or other horse sports 24. About 1 to 1. Any birth Most of the above are what we call "Insight puzzles". Research by Schooler and Melcher (University of California) found that people who wrote down the puzzles and tried to solve them on paper were on average 30% less likely to come up with the right solution than those who didn't write it down and just solved them in their heads. Writing down the puzzles invokes the use of the left side of our brain which deals with verbal and logical (algorithmic) reasoning, rather than the right side which deals with visual and creative (heuristic) thinking. These puzzles tend to require creative rather than logical reasoning to solve them, so we need to use right brain thinking.
4 of 6
23/09/11 17:42
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/lateral.htm
will always have a 50% chance of being male or female. You don't bury survivors! One Eight: there are four faces to the clock of Big Ben (see the picture to the right) Not zero degrees as you might at first think. The minute hand will be at 15 minutes (90 degrees clockwise from vertical) but the hour hand will have progressed to one quarter of the distance between 3 pm and 4 pm. Each hour represents 30 degrees (360 / 12), so one quarter of an hour equals 7.5 degrees. So the minute hand will be at 97.5 degrees: a 7.5 degree difference between the hands. 22: the minute hand will go round the dial 24 times, but the hour hand will also complete two circuits. 24 minus 2 equals 22. John If you overtake the second person then you become second. You can't overtake the last person in a race! His horse was named Friday. Go outside and throw it upwards. Cut it horizontally half way up (i.e. parallel to the top) . See right House numbers. The doctor was his mother. Going full circle, this is very similar to the first question. In a knockout competition, every team except the winner is defeated once and once only, so the number of matches is one less than the number of teams in this case 23-1 = 22. Sarah. The second room. Tigers that havent eaten in three years are dead! Pour the juice from the second glass into the fifth. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The letter e doesn't appear once in the paragraph.
29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
Score
Over 35. You are a true lateral thinking Guru. Edward De Bono would be proud of you. Or maybe you are the man himself. 28 to 34. Very good. 21 to 27. Quite good. 15 to 20. Average. Under 15 - watch The Matrix, The Simpsons and Dr Who a few more times.
When you have chosen your card, focus carefully on it and keep it clearly in your mind for 15 seconds. Once you have done this scroll down to the bottom of the page. Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt. Edward de Bono Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned. Edward de Bono
Here are som e w eb sites which w ill allow you to take lateral thinking
5 of 6
23/09/11 17:42
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/lateral.htm
further.
For some more logic problems see our Case Interviews page Timed verbal logical reasoning test Creative Careers Search Page - how to network effectively. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Diagonal Thinking Self-assessment Tool IPA Copywriting Test The most difficult application forms Can creativity be taught? Edward De Bono: the "inventor" of lateral thinking www.edwdebono.com/debono/lateral.htm
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Edison The great composers did not set to work because they were inspired but became inspired because they were working. Ari Kiev An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Edwin Land Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create. Albert Einstein
Inventions dont come in Eureka moments: they are the consequence of experts absorbing themselves for so long in their field that they become pregnant with creative energy: deep immersion in an area of expertise. Bounce, by Michael Syed
What career would suit me? Postgraduate What can I do with my degree I want to work in ....
International Students Careers events on campus Applications & interviews Example CVs
These pages are copyright of the University of Kent Careers Advisory Service. The information and advice given in these pages is primarily for the benefit of University of Kent students and graduates. You are most welcome to link to these pages but should not use content in other ways without our permission. Page maintained by Bruce Woodcock B.E.Woodcock@kent.ac.uk Please email me if you wish to make any suggestions which would improve our services.
6 of 6
23/09/11 17:42