Because you can’t get a job without being asked: “What’s your perfect job?”

If you try to find a better job, sooner or later, you’re bound to be asked the interview question: “What’s your perfect job?”

What you probably shouldn’t do is tell the truth: “Well, I’d certainly be working for myself, and not for you. I’d be in complete control of what I do, rather than having to do whatever you tell me to do. The hours would be short, way, way fewer than you’re asking me to work here. For those short hours, I’d earn an unimaginable amount of money, enough to allow me to stop working any time I wanted to. And the work itself? I don’t know, maybe playing football: I’d like to score the winning goal in the World Cup final. Sorry, you did say perfect, didn’t you?”

What you’re supposed to do is describe a job that sounds remarkably like the one you’re being interviewed for, for an organization that sounds remarkably like the one that’s interviewing you, emphasizing that you’d need a challenge, that you’d want to grow to the next level at the same time as you help your employer grow to the next level, without so much as mentioning how many hours you’d work or how much money you might earn.

What you should do is declare: “This interview is a pantomine! You’re rolling out questions that you’ve been told are deep and probing, and I’m rolling out the answers that I know you want to hear. I refuse to work in a place where such nonsense is permitted. This interview is over!” And storm out.