Favorite Interview Question?
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VisualDNA have quite cool application forms on their website. They're worth checking out.
Sample questions:
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Your manager asks you to delivery a project and you estimate 4 weeks to deliver it. He tells you he needs it in 5 days. What do you do?
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Task: write a function called GCD that prints the greatest common divisor of two positive integers (a and b ). Hint: you can use the fact that GCD(a,b ) = GCD(b, a mod b ) and GCD(a,0 ) = a. Please provide code in any language you want (Java, Scala, PHP or bash preferred).
Despite 20 years of programming, I think I'd struggle with 2! Especially during an interview.
When I started out, years ago, there used to be a lot of talk about hobbies and outside interest in interviews, but that's frowned upon these days. You have to keep it more sterile/professional.
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@joyfano don't apologize! Just not allowed to here
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I prefer questions like "How do you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"
Do they start right in, or ask "Who am I making it for?" Do they check to see if they have everything they need before they start, or make an assumption? Do they point out how efficient they are with the utensils? Do they ask how many they have to make?
You can see where this is going. If you can think of an off the wall question that they probably didn't prepare for, you will see how they respond under pressure because they will revert to their natural strengths.
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Although with that approach you might deal more in measuring surprise, dealing with ambiguity or literal interpretation more than what you mean to and might not recognize what you just tested. So be careful as a big piece will be seeing how they guess at what you mean to ask, not what you did ask so the feedback might not be useful as they don't know you yet.
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Remember that an interviewer is an unknown and a candidate has to assume that you aren't very smart. It's like answer a newbie SW post - they ask X but most experienced people assume that they meant Y because X is crazy.
But do you really want to judge them based on them trying to compensate for your weirdness or for them giving you the benefit of the doubt? Maybe you do. But there are better ways.
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My favorite question was a bit hands-on. It involved a whiteboard and creating a network that composed of a certain number of types of devices set by the interviewer.
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General thought to be alert for—
- Are you interviewing the candidate, or is the candidate interviewing you? Related, are you seeking a subordinate, direct report, equal, or something else?
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There is this one question that caught me off-guard..
"Tell me why is the manhole round?"
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@cripher said:
There is this one question that caught me off-guard..
"Tell me why is the manhole round?"
That should be easy... assuming you live in a place where manholes are common (they didn't exist where I grew up - its a question for people in cities.) It's the only shape where it can't accidentally fall through the hole when turned in the wrong way. It is also the cheapest to produce, uses the least metal and the strongest design.
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@scottalanmiller by the answers you gave me, now i believe that my answers are correct.
Here's my answer to the interviewer:
- It is round and can be rolled by one person
- you don't need to properly place it since it is round.
- If you put a circle inside a square, you can conserve additional metals on the corners.
The interviewer just smiled at me and moved to another question.
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The key reason is safety. So that it is impossible for it to fall through and kill a person working inside the manhole.
