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Lot's of very skilled people interview poorly. Nervousness, social stress, anxiety etc. So don't feel bad, people who interview applicants a lot know this. It's
by 16s 13y ago
Lot's of very skilled people interview poorly. Nervousness, social stress, anxiety etc. So don't feel bad, people who interview applicants a lot know this. It's not a mark against you. If they are interested in you, they'll find a way to learn if you have the knowledge/skills they require for the job.
If I don't know the answer to a question or if it is ambiguious, I tell them. For example, I was once asked to describe how a TCP sessions ends. Well, that's implementation defined. What OS? Are we talking FIN ACKs or do TCP resets count as ending a session too? The RFC may say this, but in the real-world, software sometimes does it like that. Etc, etc.
And, many times the questions aren't made to be answered, but to draw things out of you (like the one above). And in these cases, you can turn the questions back on them. Put them on the answering end ;) and that's OK, those exchanges tell both sides a lot about the other.
I do like a few black and white questions. Like, "How many bits are in an IPv4 address" or "What data structure is a C++ set typically implemented in" and if candidates have no idea on an answer, then I do have concern over that. However, if they do not know the answer, but understand types and their sizes and data structures and their pros/cons, then that's good enough in some cases as well.
- nrivadeneira 13y agoIn the case of startups, you get people interviewing that have very little interview experience.
- tokipin 13y agoI'm not sure it's that simple. I had an interview where I got tripped up by a simple condition in a if statement. I don't remember exactly what it was, maybe it involved a quirky negation. But either way I would've never had a problem with something that simple sitting here at my own computer. Did the interviewer understand that it was just an interview fluke? Probably not. After all, it was such a simple thing. So I would warn against believing you can see past people's interview issues. Companies in general seem to have a misplaced level of confidence in their hiring processes, even assuming their proxies for intelligence weren't naive.
- mikevm 13y ago> So don't feel bad, people who interview applicants a lot know this. They do, and they will count it against you. (A few people in this thread have actually said this)
- Bartweiss 13y agoIn addition to the people overtly saying this makes you a no-hire, it's almost impossible not to use this even if you try. Someone smooth and mistake-less will make a better impression on you, and like with most fallacies, you're left flying blind on how much to adjust your expectations to counteract it.
- merijnv 13y agoI think those people are the vocal minority. In my experience most interviewers will go out of your way to get you to feel comfortable and relax during the interview process.