Favourite interview questions
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
I've not tried this myself, but I've heard of people who use their interview time as a pair programming session. if you use pair programming, spending 30-60 minutes with someone doing pair programming on a well-defined problem that you haven't already solved yourself is a great way to test compatibility, their thought process, and the like.
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leckey wrote:
2. What is funnier in movies--monkeys or racoons and why?
Depends on the movie. The chimps in the one Air Bud movie were funny, and the raccoons in The Great Outdoors were really funny, too. It depends on the setting of the movie.
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No, the person that hacked into your account while you were away. :laugh: Jeremy Falcon
Good day gentlemen. Can we say "Way off topic"? Additionally, getting insulting in a forum is just plain silly. Now, a (hopefully) good response to the interview question posted above would be something along the lines of: A multi-threaded application would not be appropriate for applications that that would not take full advantage of the flexibility imparted by running in a multi-threaded environment. EG, a basic text editor has no need of multi-threading. But, a 3D game that is graphically intensive would very likely benefit from a careful usage of background multi-threaded routines. Also, multi-threading can keep the UI of an application responsive while handling long background tasks, such as burning CDs or DVDs, re-encoding, decoding, or otherwise converting from one file type or music/image/movie format to another, and so on. Thank you for your time, and have a pleasant day, ArchKaine Some say that ignorance is bliss... Blissful, aren't they?
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The correct answer for a VBA developer is huh? If they answer anything else you will probably end up with a multi-threaded excel macro.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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atregent wrote:
What are your favourite interview questions?
When can you start? Would you like the Lexus company car or the Ferrari? Would you want the corner office of the holodeck office? :-) Why is common sense not common? Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level where they are an expert.
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Among my questions I sprinkle a couple of "easy" questions:-D... Easy in that there are a known "right" answer;). But as we all knows, it always depends on the context what the right answer is...:) For an example: "What's your thoughts about GOTO, and please do try to explain why." Normally they result in three categories of replies. 1) "NO - BAD" = Beginner 2) "Ahh... That's a tricky question" = Beginner but aware of the trap. a) Never gives an explanation = Sneaky fellow b) "Never seen any need for them but there could..." = Either sneaky fellow or beginner with an open mind;) 3) "No, because of..." = Intermediate b) "... but maybe if one..." = Still intermediate but tries to find a solution... 4) "They do have their usage, as in..." = Advanced After a couple of these question I tend to have a rather good picture of how big their experience are, how agile their thoughts are and if they are prepared to go against common knowledge, if they decide it's necessary. All in all, I'm not particularly interested in their answer but in their reasoning coming to their conclusion. rgds /Jonas
This is a pretty good question.
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Good day gentlemen. Can we say "Way off topic"? Additionally, getting insulting in a forum is just plain silly. Now, a (hopefully) good response to the interview question posted above would be something along the lines of: A multi-threaded application would not be appropriate for applications that that would not take full advantage of the flexibility imparted by running in a multi-threaded environment. EG, a basic text editor has no need of multi-threading. But, a 3D game that is graphically intensive would very likely benefit from a careful usage of background multi-threaded routines. Also, multi-threading can keep the UI of an application responsive while handling long background tasks, such as burning CDs or DVDs, re-encoding, decoding, or otherwise converting from one file type or music/image/movie format to another, and so on. Thank you for your time, and have a pleasant day, ArchKaine Some say that ignorance is bliss... Blissful, aren't they?
ArchKaine wrote:
Additionally, getting insulting in a forum is just plain silly.
Yeah, but at least we entertained a few people. :-D Jeremy Falcon
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ArchKaine wrote:
Additionally, getting insulting in a forum is just plain silly.
Yeah, but at least we entertained a few people. :-D Jeremy Falcon
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No, the person that hacked into your account while you were away. :laugh: Jeremy Falcon
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If I start getting smart arse answers in a first interview they get a quick one way trip out the back door. I expect a high level of profesionalism. We are a leader in our field and a highly desired employer so there are plently of people to choose from. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
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Good day gentlemen. Can we say "Way off topic"? Additionally, getting insulting in a forum is just plain silly. Now, a (hopefully) good response to the interview question posted above would be something along the lines of: A multi-threaded application would not be appropriate for applications that that would not take full advantage of the flexibility imparted by running in a multi-threaded environment. EG, a basic text editor has no need of multi-threading. But, a 3D game that is graphically intensive would very likely benefit from a careful usage of background multi-threaded routines. Also, multi-threading can keep the UI of an application responsive while handling long background tasks, such as burning CDs or DVDs, re-encoding, decoding, or otherwise converting from one file type or music/image/movie format to another, and so on. Thank you for your time, and have a pleasant day, ArchKaine Some say that ignorance is bliss... Blissful, aren't they?
Good day to you Sir :)
ArchKaine wrote:
A multi-threaded application would not be appropriate for applications that that would not take full advantage of the flexibility imparted by running in a multi-threaded environment. EG, a basic text editor has no need of multi-threading. But, a 3D game that is graphically intensive would very likely benefit from a careful usage of background multi-threaded routines. Also, multi-threading can keep the UI of an application responsive while handling long background tasks, such as burning CDs or DVDs, re-encoding, decoding, or otherwise converting from one file type or music/image/movie format to another, and so on.
The question was "Does multithreading make a program faster?" You have not addressed the issue of speed at all. Think about the effect of having multiple cpu's in a machine and multiple non-interrelated tasks to perform.
ArchKaine wrote:
Thank you for your time, and have a pleasant day,
You too mate Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
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Good day to you Sir :)
ArchKaine wrote:
A multi-threaded application would not be appropriate for applications that that would not take full advantage of the flexibility imparted by running in a multi-threaded environment. EG, a basic text editor has no need of multi-threading. But, a 3D game that is graphically intensive would very likely benefit from a careful usage of background multi-threaded routines. Also, multi-threading can keep the UI of an application responsive while handling long background tasks, such as burning CDs or DVDs, re-encoding, decoding, or otherwise converting from one file type or music/image/movie format to another, and so on.
The question was "Does multithreading make a program faster?" You have not addressed the issue of speed at all. Think about the effect of having multiple cpu's in a machine and multiple non-interrelated tasks to perform.
ArchKaine wrote:
Thank you for your time, and have a pleasant day,
You too mate Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
Josh Gray wrote:
The question was "Does multithreading make a program faster?" You have not addressed the issue of speed at all. Think about the effect of having multiple cpu's in a machine and multiple non-interrelated tasks to perform.
Then based on what I said above, it really does depend on the application. Not only that, it depends on how the code is written, and whether the coder multi-threaded the right areas of the application. Using my text editor from above as an example, you conceivably could multi-thread it, it would most likely run just fine. But as far as being faster... In that particular case, I'd have to say no. The reason being you'd be writing more code to accomplish the same ends, and as such, you're forcing the computer to do more than is needed to do a simple task. This applies whether there is one processor, or 64,000 processors. In the end of it all though, whether or not an application is faster if it's multi-threaded truly does depend on whether that application would be appropriate for being written to take advantage of multi-threading. In which case, I'd say yes it would be faster, or at the very least, more efficient. Thank you again for your time. ArchKaine Some say that ignorance is bliss... Blissful, aren't they?
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No, the person that hacked into your account while you were away. :laugh: Jeremy Falcon
I wouldn't ask techy questions as such. If the CV has all the "gunk" then why bother with tech questions such as "Threading" etc? Perhaps ask how much they know about the area they will be working with (i.e. VB), and how they think they can apply their skills to a problem - or something around the lines of that. Also if you ask about "do you have skills in some random, difficult underground programming scripting language?" then they could answer with "no i have no skills with that, or never used that", then great, they are honest. If they humm and hover over the question then clearly they want to impress and don't have skills in it at all (can you tell I just had a set of interviews? /;)
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
Anthony, Instead of asking technical questions, I would be more interested to hear from a candidate how they cope with things they don't know. For example: - what book did you recently read? - do you have a subscription on an IT related magazine? - which websites do you visit / are you registered on? - do you read / follow any newsgroup(s)? My experience is that 50% of development time is research and a good developer must be capable to find the right products/information quickly. Also, a developer which reads IT-books simply because he likes it has an interest in IT from the heart and not because it pays the bills. Good luck with the interview. Regards, Kees
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Don't forget to ask why manhole covers are round!
They are round to accomodate the people who fall into them... otherwise there would be a chance that the person gets stuck and doesn't fall through... also, being round means maximum number of people will be able to stare into the manhole at the same time... after someone has fallen in ;)
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
I like to ask four types of questions; 1) - Technical - I need to know if they have the basic skills for the job and tools we use. Basic technical, such as what does Select Case do, and best practices related to using it (Case else). 2) - Interpretive - I need to see how a person organizes their thoughts. 'How would you present this data?'. If they get a report with 200 data points how would they present it to various audiences. They should not try to use a pie chart for 200 data points... 3) - Kobayashi Meru - the impossible scenario. I use this to see if a person can anaylyze the situation and ask for help. We need people who are hungry to get answers. We need to solve problems and locate answers quickly. If we don't know the answer then we need to ask until I find the right resource. Some people will fumble around, may not know the product limitations, or are too proud to admit they don't have an answer. 4) - General awareness - Asking a current events question, or current environment question such as the color of the waiting area, number of [widgets] or something that will demonstrate that this person is observant and 'in the game'. Good luck Tom Hamilton Intel Corporation, Folsom
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
Q. What does VBA stand for? A. Visual Basic for Applications. available in MS Office Q. What is API? A. Aplication Program Interface, provides access to lower level functions of an operating system. Q. What does "OO" stand for in reference to style of programming technique? A. Object Oriented Programming, refers to utilising classes in you applications Q. What does COM stand for? A. Component Object Model. refers to building your applications out of reusable objects such as DLL's, services etc. Q. What is MTS? A. MS Transaction Server. pre COM/COM+ management service for DLL's and services for NT4 and below, allow object pooling and management Q. What do you use to visualy manage COM+ under Windows XP? A. Component Services. DLL and service hosting service, new MTS Q. What is SMTP? A. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. used to send email on port 25, can be used directly to send mail. Q. What is CDONTS used for? (CDO for NTS - Colloboration Data Object for Win NT Server) A. CDONTS is used to send SMPT primarily on NT 4. Q. What does SDLC stand for? A. Software Development Life Cycle. describes a development project structure Q. What does SQL stand for? A. Structured Query Language. Q. What does DTS stand for? A. SQL Server Data Transformation Service. you create process flow for data manipulation in MSSQL. Q. How do you return last idenity value of a record after an insert query? A. select @@identity or scope_identity(), bonus points for scope_identity() is only avail on SQL2000+. Q. What is VMWare? A. Virtualisation software, software that allows hosting of virtual operating systems, eg development enviroments or production testing envirments. Q. What is DHTML? A. Dynamic HTML. combination of client side java script and html. If you can give a list of technologies you use will be easier to give you some questions. Also what level do you want? Intermediate or Advanced? you play with the best... you learn like the rest...
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If someone can write me a multi threaded excel macro, particularly if it's complex enough to warrant multi threading, I'd be very impressed!
atregent wrote:
I'd be very impressed!
That's the opposite of the response you should have. A good developer knows the right tool for the job, and VBA is not it for anything complex.:~
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
One thing I do is find out what systems or languages they know and then ask them to compare them. Like if they have programmed with both C++ and Java; I’d ask them when they would choose one tool over the other. See if they know advantages and disadvantages of managed memory, multiple inheritance, etc. I find if they can contrast these things well, then they have a pretty good understanding. Bill Westrick
