Timeline for How to react to wrong/not answered questions during interview? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
40 events
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| Jun 29, 2015 at 15:19 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Jul 1, 2015 at 12:36 | |||||
| Jun 22, 2015 at 13:26 | history | closed | Ixrec durron597 CommunityBot enderland | Opinion-based | |
| Jun 21, 2015 at 10:36 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jun 22, 2015 at 13:26 | |||||
| Feb 6, 2012 at 15:02 | answer | added | Gangnus | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 18, 2012 at 8:11 | comment | added | Mykolas Simutis | @EvanPlaice not that I really care, but down vote for questions I've asked during interview and not my question in particular? Interview questions were only to help me illustrate the situation. And what according to you should I ask? If I'd be asking concrete skills for the job, they would have not answered any of them, while candidate will learn everything he needs during internship. Furthermore - job involves writing complex algorithms and I think questions are quite accurate to see if they are able to simply think. If you don't know recursion - don't bother me. | |
| Jan 18, 2012 at 3:14 | comment | added | Evan Plaice | -1 Fail. Why don't you ask some questions to determine traits that actually matter. Not ask how well they remember the same canned out-of-context questions they received in school. I wrote a multi-display touch-screen interface for a commercial flight simulator that used a database/orm back-end and a custom layer 2 networking protocol to communicate with the host before and I probably would've failed 3-4 of these at the time (and didn't even understand what recursion was at the time). This isn't a gauge of skill, it's a gauge of whether they have solved trivial problems in a classroom. | |
| Jan 12, 2012 at 20:37 | comment | added | jbranchaud | Another article similar to the one @Matthieu posted is: Why the New Guy Can't Code | |
| Jan 12, 2012 at 20:18 | comment | added | Xeon06 | @DavidZaslavsky ah I see. Thanks for the explanation! | |
| Jan 12, 2012 at 20:11 | comment | added | David Z | @Xeon06: as long as c is the largest of the numbers, yes. | |
| Jan 12, 2012 at 19:44 | comment | added | Xeon06 | Site question: I don't have a lot of geometry knowledge and I have no idea how to solve the first problem. Is it as simple as checking if a * a + b * b == c * c? | |
| Jan 12, 2012 at 18:00 | comment | added | Bart Silverstrim | ...if these are for internships, aren't they supposed to be demonstrating more a willingness and capacity to learn, eagerness, and traits of that kind rather than their ability to already solve problems as if they're your employee? Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but seeing as there's only a chance they'll be around after the internship is over, I'd think you'd want to teach them skills in the workforce over having people already qualified to hang around as slave labor...what will they learn, and what will you learn from them? | |
| Jan 12, 2012 at 11:22 | comment | added | Christoffer Hammarström | Given a computer and access to the internet they should be able to solve these without much problem. I would never ask them to do it on a whiteboard off the top of their head. | |
| Jan 12, 2012 at 5:32 | answer | added | Dawood ibn Kareem | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 23:28 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/157242436278689794 | ||
| Jan 11, 2012 at 22:08 | comment | added | Antonio2011a | Hang on, why did you ask the questions if you were "not prepared for someone not to solve them"? In general I would've thought the reason you asked the question was to discriminate between "good" and "not so good" programmers !! Also as a reader of this website, I'm doubly surprised that you thought everyone would be able to solve them !! Anyway keep in mind that students are probably going to be really nervous, and may have differing backgrounds. Also what kind of work are they going to be doing? I have mixed feelings about these kinds of questions. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 21:32 | comment | added | Max | @Angelo Don't forget the unit tests! Once I got hired over someone else when we had pretty equivalent solutions because I had included the unit tests I'd written. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 20:28 | answer | added | KeithS | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 17:37 | vote | accept | Mykolas Simutis | ||
| Jan 11, 2012 at 17:33 | comment | added | Angelo | @Nick, you have to check the squares of the sides for the three possible permutations. It isn't specified that "c" has to be the hypotenuse. And also, it would also be most correct to check that the integers are all positive! | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 17:10 | answer | added | Raku | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 17:06 | comment | added | The Muffin Man | @MykolasSimutis Correct me if i'm wrong, your triangle question would just evaluate that the hypotenuse (c) is equal to a + b. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 17:00 | comment | added | Bill K | For the coding problems, by the way, supply them with an environment they are comfortable with--keyboard, their editor of choice, language of choice, etc--ask them about it in the phone screening and set it up for them if possible. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:55 | comment | added | Bill K | The whole pushback against this type of question kind of makes me scratch my head. I find these enjoyable and I think that anyone who didn't find this kind of quizzing enjoyable probably doesn't have the mindset to be an engineer. I've seen this run of whiny articles railing against quizzes and I'm pretty confused on the whole thing. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:37 | answer | added | rjzii | timeline score: 36 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:30 | answer | added | Kevin Hsu | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:29 | comment | added | Ramhound | @MykolasSimutis - While most students in our field are introduced to programming before they go to college, how much really depends on the student, granted their final year not being able to write a function that does the Fibonacci Sequence is not acceptable. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:18 | comment | added | Max | I'm gonna have to be tough here; If someone can't implement a list structure, they have no reason to be programming, or atleast there is no reason to hire them. And then I read that it's their final year at university? This implies a multi-year education, and at that point they should definately know something as basic as that. That said, I think it's fair to show courtesy and continue the interview. It might just be a fluke, and they really are brilliant programmers. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:12 | comment | added | Mykolas Simutis | they are on their final year. but i would have solved the problems even before I joined university, so for me it was quite bit a shock. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:09 | comment | added | rjzii | If these are students that you are interviewing, how far along in their studies are they? | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:09 | comment | added | Matthieu | Agreed. But a mix of both points of view lead me to adopt a way of interviewing people well described by Karl's answer. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:06 | answer | added | Brian Dishaw | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:05 | comment | added | Mykolas Simutis | I don't fully agree. While I agree, that these white paper programming task are bit annoying, anyone filling for programmer position should solve them using pseudo code (I did not ask for this to be syntax correct) easily. Like Joel writes joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html applicants "should sail right through these questions". | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 16:02 | answer | added | Karl Bielefeldt | timeline score: 84 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 15:56 | answer | added | Ryathal | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 15:44 | answer | added | Péter Török | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 15:44 | answer | added | Mason Wheeler | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 15:43 | comment | added | Matthieu | See this article for an alternative point of view about this kind of questions. | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 15:42 | answer | added | George Stocker | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 15:35 | answer | added | Mongus Pong | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 11, 2012 at 15:29 | history | asked | Mykolas Simutis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |