[thelist] Good "tests" for prospective employees?

[Jay Blanchard]

[snip]
> I like thinking exercises that help to demonstrate other cognitive
> skills...here are some examples
[/snip]

:)

I should have added a smilie...it was meant more for fun. However,
pattern recognition and problem solving in programmers is a valuable
thing. Microsoft asks questions like, "Why are manhole covers round?"
and "How many trips from one room to another would you have to make to
determine which of three switches was connected three light bulbs in the
other room?" in their interviews. Actually, for testing web devs, I have
asked them to do the "here is a print out of a page, write the HTML that
would produce it", I have asked them to identify things, like presenting
them with a snippet of CSS and asking them what the expected output
would be, things like that. I have also given 20 questions tests that
asks things like "what is the only required tag in the following group?"
<group of tags presented>.

Here are the answers;

S (it is a line)
0 (8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 6, 3, 2 is in alphabetical order, the next available
letter is 'z')
S (OTTFFS == One Two Three Four Five Six, so the next one is Seven)

Letters made up of straight lines (Group #1: AEFHI)
Letters made up of lines with at least one curve (Group #2: BCDGJ)
Which means that you can figure out which groups other letters would
belong to.

One other thought....

On Friday afternoons I or one of my programmers would put a logic puzzle
of some sort up on the white board for all to ruminate over. It was fun.
It is dress down day. We often had milk and cookies. Folks from other
departments would come in just to get a look at the puzzle and maybe
attempt to solve it before the prgrammers would. Some would come over
just for the moment that it allowed each of us to take a step back from
the stress and pace of the week. Sometimes the puzzles could be worked
out programmatically, sometimes not. The point wasn't to solve the
puzzle though, the point was to make an attempt, stretch the brain and
maybe strengthen some neural pathways. And while I am not 5 (I am
pushing 50 and have been programming longer than some of you have been
alive) I am growing older, but not up (thanks Jimmy!) and I think that
this type of game playing stretches your imagination and maybe, just
maybe, makes things a little more fun. And it made for good team
building.