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Math puzzles are great if the problem is easily understood, the solution achievable without a math degree, and you ask them to solve it by writing code. For ex
by biot 13y ago
Math puzzles are great if the problem is easily understood, the solution achievable without a math degree, and you ask them to solve it by writing code.
For example: "This database contains 100,000 problems with standardized parameters. The problem definition is defined in the file spec.txt which you can grab from our code repository. Write the code to solve these problems efficiently, passing each solution to a remote service via POSTing to a REST API, the documentation for which you can find here. Bonus points for parallel execution. Feel free to use any editor/IDE and reference online documentation, Stack Overflow, etc. that you want. If anything's not clear or you need a hand with something, just ask as you would if you were an employee already. Ready to get started?"
The great thing is that once you've identified a candidate, you can do remote screen sharing and have them write code before they even have to come into the office. I've interviewed a fair number of remote people this way and it's excellent for weeding out the people who can talk the talk but can't program worth a damn. And it limits bias because you don't care about much beyond their communication ability plus their technical ability.