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No, if you really want to game it you sign up for membership on Chinese forums where people post the questions word for word minutes after completing the interv

No, if you really want to game it you sign up for membership on Chinese forums where people post the questions word for word minutes after completing the interview. That or work exclusively with private recruiters that tell you the questions verbatim because they have a vested interest in you passing. Interview questions don't rotate that frequently, especially for smaller companies or more specialized roles, and a $60 membership for a month will buy you internal referrals and potentially land you hundreds of thousands of dollars of value in a new position.

nomy99 5y ago
can you give me a link to one of these forums?
- o10449366 5y ago
  1point3acres is the most prolific, but there are many others.
  - nomy99 5y ago
    Thx
  - fermentation 5y ago
    Wow there seems to be an absolutely massive amount of useful information, maybe I should learn how to read it!
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      Google translate is sufficient. They’ll do it pretty carefully, complete with “pretend you get stuck at this specific point and if you get asked why to use a hashmap, act baffled for a moment, and then say X”
      - jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
        As someone who has studied and passed before in this manner, and is now an interviewer, I have a simple solution that other companies should follow: for at least one round of interviewing, let me (the interviewer) use my own custom question, where the goal is not so much to solve it but rather to reason outloud collaboratively about many different aspects of the question. I like to use 3d graphics as a domain that candidates most likely havent seen before, but sufficiently motivated/smart ones can hold their own in. If someone doesn't quickly and intuitively grasp that a shape is a collection of faces, and a face is a collection of points, and a point is a collection of vertices, I'm not sure that they have what I am personally looking for (even though we dont do any 3d graphics in our project)
        baskethead 5y ago
        This is exactly the type of question that is the worst for interviews. It's a completely uncalibrated, completely subjective, esoteric type of question where you can't say exactly why you liked a candidate or why you didn't like her. There's no data underneath it except for "I liked how the conversation went." It completely gives an advantage to candidates who know 3D and completely gives a disadvantage to candidates that know nothing about it. Even worse, they are relying on YOU to explain it to them. Who's to say you are sufficiently qualified to teach people the basics of 3D graphics enough such that they can answer your questions? Have you been calibrated or judged on your ability to teach even the basics of 3D graphics? Or are you assuming that you're good enough? It's completely inappropriate and relying completely on you to determine a candidate's qualifications based on nothing except your feelings. It's a horrible question and I seriously hope this is not entertained at all at your company.
        nlh 5y ago
        So I'm not a part of this world at all and I'm super fascinated by this perspective. I hear your point entirely. How do you counter the issue with pre-structured interviews where the questions get distributed and you end up with candidates who learn how to answer your exact question (but lack the skills to actually be dynamic in their job, or even do their job)?
  - outloudvi 5y ago
    Interesting. I had never expected 1P3A mentioned on HN. It's mainly a forum for Chinese overseas to discuss their life and so on. Surrounding this topic they have also developed side features like COVID-19 statistics and some system for school applicants.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    Is this common among immigrant communities? For example do Vietnamese or Indian or Nigerian communities exist to give each other exclusive support on finding jobs or other such advantages?
    - normie3000 5y ago
      Yes. And American immigrant communities in other countries. The size and formality will generally correlate with the size of the immigrant community. From real-world social networks to Facebook groups to dedicated sites and forums.
    - shankr 5y ago
      Just another kind of networking.
cleverwebble 5y ago
As an interviewer, this is so incredibly frustrating - we don't change our questions often and because of that the questions and answers are all over these forums. With that said, it is incredibly easy to spot someone cheating - they often write the most perfect optimal solution from start to finish, helper functions first, often with the same function names as the forums themselves. The trick I've learned is to ask "why" - "why did you decide to use a linked list for this problem?" - the real cheaters often freeze up and can't give an explanation at all. It's rare, but still too common. If you've seen the question/answer before just say so! I will totally appreciate the honesty and it goes a long way.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > If you've seen the question/answer before just say so! In my experience failing to answer the alternative question you give me has (on average) a much more negative impact than pretending I don’t know your question (especially when I can explain it).
  - jjj123 5y ago
    Yeah and often the interviewer won’t be prepared with a backup question so you waste time for them to find one. It sucks that it puts the interviewee in a worse position for being honest.
    - sharpy 5y ago
      A advantage to having standard interview questions. Plus the questions we ask lend themselves to extensions (also predefined) so you can still see how they reason about and solve those. And given that our interviewers are familiar with them, we can calibrate across many candidates. We also have a pool of people who maintain the standard interview questions.
      - jjj123 5y ago
        Yeah I worked for a company that did all of those things as well, it didn’t change the fact that the interviewer was always less prepared with the second question, and that there’s always wasted time switching between questions. The true nightmare was when a candidate knew two questions in a row, or when they didn’t realize they knew a question until 5-10 minutes in. In a perfect world every interviewer would calibrate for those minutes lost, but that calibration is fuzzy at best unless it’s built in to your scoring rubric.
ogennadi 5y ago
Please suggest some Chinese forums: I’m not sure how to google for them…
firstSpeaker 5y ago
@o10449366 what is the $60 website you mentioned?

nomy99 5y ago

can you give me a link to one of these forums?

o10449366 5y ago
1point3acres is the most prolific, but there are many others.
- nomy99 5y ago
  Thx
- fermentation 5y ago
  Wow there seems to be an absolutely massive amount of useful information, maybe I should learn how to read it!
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Google translate is sufficient. They’ll do it pretty carefully, complete with “pretend you get stuck at this specific point and if you get asked why to use a hashmap, act baffled for a moment, and then say X”
    - jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
      As someone who has studied and passed before in this manner, and is now an interviewer, I have a simple solution that other companies should follow: for at least one round of interviewing, let me (the interviewer) use my own custom question, where the goal is not so much to solve it but rather to reason outloud collaboratively about many different aspects of the question. I like to use 3d graphics as a domain that candidates most likely havent seen before, but sufficiently motivated/smart ones can hold their own in. If someone doesn't quickly and intuitively grasp that a shape is a collection of faces, and a face is a collection of points, and a point is a collection of vertices, I'm not sure that they have what I am personally looking for (even though we dont do any 3d graphics in our project)
      - baskethead 5y ago
        This is exactly the type of question that is the worst for interviews. It's a completely uncalibrated, completely subjective, esoteric type of question where you can't say exactly why you liked a candidate or why you didn't like her. There's no data underneath it except for "I liked how the conversation went." It completely gives an advantage to candidates who know 3D and completely gives a disadvantage to candidates that know nothing about it. Even worse, they are relying on YOU to explain it to them. Who's to say you are sufficiently qualified to teach people the basics of 3D graphics enough such that they can answer your questions? Have you been calibrated or judged on your ability to teach even the basics of 3D graphics? Or are you assuming that you're good enough? It's completely inappropriate and relying completely on you to determine a candidate's qualifications based on nothing except your feelings. It's a horrible question and I seriously hope this is not entertained at all at your company.
        nlh 5y ago
        So I'm not a part of this world at all and I'm super fascinated by this perspective. I hear your point entirely. How do you counter the issue with pre-structured interviews where the questions get distributed and you end up with candidates who learn how to answer your exact question (but lack the skills to actually be dynamic in their job, or even do their job)?
- outloudvi 5y ago
  Interesting. I had never expected 1P3A mentioned on HN. It's mainly a forum for Chinese overseas to discuss their life and so on. Surrounding this topic they have also developed side features like COVID-19 statistics and some system for school applicants.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Is this common among immigrant communities? For example do Vietnamese or Indian or Nigerian communities exist to give each other exclusive support on finding jobs or other such advantages?
  - normie3000 5y ago
    Yes. And American immigrant communities in other countries. The size and formality will generally correlate with the size of the immigrant community. From real-world social networks to Facebook groups to dedicated sites and forums.
  - shankr 5y ago
    Just another kind of networking.

cleverwebble 5y ago

As an interviewer, this is so incredibly frustrating - we don't change our questions often and because of that the questions and answers are all over these forums. With that said, it is incredibly easy to spot someone cheating - they often write the most perfect optimal solution from start to finish, helper functions first, often with the same function names as the forums themselves. The trick I've learned is to ask "why" - "why did you decide to use a linked list for this problem?" - the real cheaters often freeze up and can't give an explanation at all. It's rare, but still too common. If you've seen the question/answer before just say so! I will totally appreciate the honesty and it goes a long way.

Aeolun 5y ago
> If you've seen the question/answer before just say so! In my experience failing to answer the alternative question you give me has (on average) a much more negative impact than pretending I don’t know your question (especially when I can explain it).
- jjj123 5y ago
  Yeah and often the interviewer won’t be prepared with a backup question so you waste time for them to find one. It sucks that it puts the interviewee in a worse position for being honest.
  - sharpy 5y ago
    A advantage to having standard interview questions. Plus the questions we ask lend themselves to extensions (also predefined) so you can still see how they reason about and solve those. And given that our interviewers are familiar with them, we can calibrate across many candidates. We also have a pool of people who maintain the standard interview questions.
    - jjj123 5y ago
      Yeah I worked for a company that did all of those things as well, it didn’t change the fact that the interviewer was always less prepared with the second question, and that there’s always wasted time switching between questions. The true nightmare was when a candidate knew two questions in a row, or when they didn’t realize they knew a question until 5-10 minutes in. In a perfect world every interviewer would calibrate for those minutes lost, but that calibration is fuzzy at best unless it’s built in to your scoring rubric.

ogennadi 5y ago

Please suggest some Chinese forums: I’m not sure how to google for them…

firstSpeaker 5y ago

@o10449366 what is the $60 website you mentioned?