3 ms·

I think this person misses the point of technical interview. Technical interview is to assert the candidate actually has the skills and experience claimed in th

I think this person misses the point of technical interview. Technical interview is to assert the candidate actually has the skills and experience claimed in the resume. When somebody is saying he or she has 20 years of C++ experience and 150 projects shipped yet he or she does not know what is virtual function - this means he or she lied on the resume. If you had not conducted a technical interview - you'd learned about this much later, at much greater cost. Chances are that somebody who lies on the resume is also good at BSing about "past projects" and "greatest achievements". FizzBuzz or a general screen test won't help because people have different skills. If you are hiring somebody who writes Perl it's stupid to ask about C++ and vice versa. Writing a test project - probably the best way to hire recent graduates. Probably the worst way to hire somebody who already has a job and you are desperate to poach, not really good at picking people who have several offers to choose from either.

alok-g 13y ago
The purpose of an interview is to see if the person is a good fit for the position at hand; looking at the "future". The past experience is a natural measure of future performance, provided the future projects at the new position are similar to the past projects. My experience [1] is that the past projects can often be significantly different from the future projects, and yet the candidate may be a great fit. What does carry along with the person is still something about the way that person thinks, handles problems, basic aptitude, knowledge and understanding, etc. Fizzbuzz is a good measure of basic programming aptitude [2]. I have constantly used simple equivalents of Fizzbuzz for electrical engineering and have hired some great performers. [1] I have conducted over 100 interviews. [2] C++ vs. Perl should not matter much since the question is about the basic algorithm.
- pandaman 13y ago
  >The purpose of an interview is to see if the person is a good fit for the position at hand This depends on the position. If the position requires an MS degree and 5 years of experience you'd need to spend couple of weeks testing for the whole corpus of knowledge, that these requirements demand. It's quite expensive and few candidates are willing to spend this much time. The only practical way is to go with the credentials the person already has. If you are looking for somebody to write websites using frameworks then, indeed, you can test all required skills in a day of technical interviews. The handling of problems would be nice to know but, unfortunately, is hard to test. Somebody who just flew into the interview and is confronted by a bunch of strangers is not in the best shape to handle problems. If he can even in these conditions - good, now you know that this person can work under stress. Successfully solving simple puzzles though does not show anything more than this - you are likely looking for somebody to solve much harder problems that require weeks and months of research. Neither does a negative result mean much - this is most likely a result of stress. So the brain teasers and "how many sorting algos you can write on a white board in 30 mins" type of questions, in my opinion, are useless. Asking concrete questions in the domain of the candidates knowledge on the other hand, lets you quickly verify much wider set of skills.
  - alok-g 13y ago
    I am largely in agreement on what you wrote here.

alok-g 13y ago

The purpose of an interview is to see if the person is a good fit for the position at hand; looking at the "future". The past experience is a natural measure of future performance, provided the future projects at the new position are similar to the past projects. My experience [1] is that the past projects can often be significantly different from the future projects, and yet the candidate may be a great fit. What does carry along with the person is still something about the way that person thinks, handles problems, basic aptitude, knowledge and understanding, etc. Fizzbuzz is a good measure of basic programming aptitude [2]. I have constantly used simple equivalents of Fizzbuzz for electrical engineering and have hired some great performers. [1] I have conducted over 100 interviews. [2] C++ vs. Perl should not matter much since the question is about the basic algorithm.

pandaman 13y ago
>The purpose of an interview is to see if the person is a good fit for the position at hand This depends on the position. If the position requires an MS degree and 5 years of experience you'd need to spend couple of weeks testing for the whole corpus of knowledge, that these requirements demand. It's quite expensive and few candidates are willing to spend this much time. The only practical way is to go with the credentials the person already has. If you are looking for somebody to write websites using frameworks then, indeed, you can test all required skills in a day of technical interviews. The handling of problems would be nice to know but, unfortunately, is hard to test. Somebody who just flew into the interview and is confronted by a bunch of strangers is not in the best shape to handle problems. If he can even in these conditions - good, now you know that this person can work under stress. Successfully solving simple puzzles though does not show anything more than this - you are likely looking for somebody to solve much harder problems that require weeks and months of research. Neither does a negative result mean much - this is most likely a result of stress. So the brain teasers and "how many sorting algos you can write on a white board in 30 mins" type of questions, in my opinion, are useless. Asking concrete questions in the domain of the candidates knowledge on the other hand, lets you quickly verify much wider set of skills.
- alok-g 13y ago
  I am largely in agreement on what you wrote here.