I received an on-campus interview a couple of days after a college career fair. The interview was surprisingly nontechnical, as I had gotten no indication of what it would look like beforehand. The follow-up was a phone interview a few months later with a separate branch of IBM. I was asked some of the same nontechnical questions, along with some algorithms/data structures questions and brain teasers.

If you have eight objects that all weigh the same, except for one which is heavier, and a two-sided scale, what is the minimal number of times you can use the scale to determine the odd item out?