[thelist] Good "tests" for prospective employees?

Burhan Khalid thelist at meidomus.com
Sat Jul 2 02:03:41 CDT 2005


Jay Blanchard wrote:
> [snip]
> Developers rarely develop in isolation with no resources. Life is an
> open book exam.
> [/snip]
> 
> And some of the twenty questions were like "Which would you find the
> answer?" type questions.
> 
> [snip]
> And now that you've posted the answers to your questions I guess it
> doesn't matter that I figured them out. Spoilsport.
> [/snip]
> 
> Sorry :) I guess I could have waited a day. But you did well, and you're
> attitude about it is great.
> 
> It appears that I have touched a nerve in this discussion though, as
> several have been polarized by the thought that these kind of questions
> mnight come up in an interview. I know I cannot cover it all, but there
> are more things at play here (and some of you proved the point);
> 
> When hiring there are several factors to be considered, skill level,
> apptitude, flexibility, attitude, personality, experience and more. A
> brain teaser may reveal a lot about not only the ability to solve the
> problem but the approach (as I wrote in my previous post) to problem
> solving. If the candidate says, "let me Google for the answer", what
> does that reveal to you? If the candidate wrinkles her nose and says,
> "I'm not really good at these kinds of things", what does that reveal?
> If the candidate says "wait! Don't give me the answer!", how do you see
> them? These types of questions are not the entire interview, but when
> combined with the classic approaches make for a more enlightening
> experience for the interviewer and interviewee.

I read the entire thread with great interest, however, I have to take a 
point with Jay's approach.

Some people are simply not good at interviews.  Maybe they get nervous? 
  Maybe for whatever reason, they are uncomfortable with the interview? 
These kinds of things greatly affect the performance of an interviewee 
and *should* be taken into context when judging their interview.

Tests like the ones you posted really don't tell me an an employer much 
about the person's job skills.  As I said, some people are great at 
quiz-type questions, and some people are not.  I got only the last 
question in the test posted, mainly because I am really bad at those 
types of questions, however, I'm good at what I do.

I recently had to inteview for a few positions in our company.  One of 
them was a programming position, one was design, and the other was for a 
semi-management position.

For programming-related interview (which fall right under my domain), I 
approach the interview in this manner.  First, I read through the 
cv/resume and then highlight a few projects that I want to concentrate 
on.  After the routine questions, I start asking questions such as :

1. For this project, what was your role in the team?
2. What kind of problems did you run into? How did you solve them?
3. What do you feel are your strongest attributes in programming?

After a few such as the above, I give them a generic problem to 
determine their problem-solving approach.  Not everyone solves problems 
the same way, so its a good way to judge how a person works.

Giving them a computer with notepad and asking them to develop a site is 
a complete waste of your time and the interviewes(sp?) time. This is not 
how sites are developed in the real world.

> If we are lucky we may get to spend two or three hours with a potential
> candidate and have to make several decisions. Do they know what they are
> doing? Are they the kind of problem solver we are looking for? Are they
> teachable? Do they bring something we don't have to the table? Do they
> fit well with the team? Is their attitude generally good? Do the have
> the skills we are looking for? Are they a leader or a follower? And on
> and on....

These are the things that I feel one should concentrate on the most, 
because these directly affect their job skills.

> The point is this. We have to find ways to reveal as much information
> about a candidate as possible in the short amount of time that we are
> allowed to spend with them before we say, "welcome to the team" or
> "we'll be in touch". I find that questions like this reveal so much more
> than whether a person has the ability to recognize a pattern. Everything
> in an interview is a test.

Speaking of weird tests ... a friend of mine had an interview with 
Microsoft and they asked him the following question:

"There are two jars, one with red and green marbles, and the other 
empty.  How would you change this situation so that there is the highest 
probability of getting a red marble from the empty jar?"

He answered:

"Place all the green marbles in the empty jar first, then place all the 
red marbles."

After the interview was over, he asked me the same question and I answered:

"Place one red marble in the empty jar."

FWIW.


More information about the thelist mailing list