Comment by freehorse

> asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question

Is that true? Is that a cultural thing that I do not get? I am in the same boat as OP and consider these questions, if intended for no-work specific context, very inappropriate. The age is irrelevant. If you are interviewing a young applicant who is not expected to have work experience, ask them about sth in the school context instead of work context.

Young people can still have really bad experiences. Especially when you interview a big number of people, you are guaranteed to fall upon some pretty bad. It seems to me that the right expected way to answer such a question is to find some personal experience that is bad, but not _that bad_, and then try to flip it and show you persevered. It seems to me that you are selecting for people who are better in making up stories this way, than anything else, because there is very often no way to answer such a question in any truthful, factual manner.

Personally I would only give answers in a work related context, and make sure to be clear that this is the way I interpreted the question.