Interview questions (.net and non-technical)
-
I attend quite a few interviews as a freelance developer, and they seem to come in two flavours. Firstly there's the informal 'chat' approach possibly with a small technical test and then there's the 'you're going to have to impress us son' full on technical grilling. As a candidate obviously I prefer the former as the subject is just so huge that however good you are there is always something they can draw on which you're not going to be 100% on. My old boss used to tell me that aptitude was far more important than specific knowledge. Smart man. One thing I've never been asked, but I think would be good thing to ask would be to see how far the candidate can recite their powers of 2, and see if they know what various common ASCII codes are - 32, 48, 65, 97 etc. Although this might seem off-track and bitty and has no particular relevance to .NET, I think this is a good way to instantly gauge how long someone has been around computers. These things flow for seasoned developers. Non-tech, I quite liked the question 'what is the angle between the hour and minute hand at twenty to eight' as well, but that's probably just being mean... Regards, Rob Philpott.
IMHO, these questions are just ridiculous. I've been around computers for 20 years, and I don't know what those ASCII codes represent. In fact, I don't even get the point of knowing ASCII codes by heart. If I ever need this information, I'll just Google for it. The best way to know if somebody is a great candidate is have him code a little bit. What we did was pretty simple, we put requirements on paper and asked the candidates to code a small application based on the requirements and give them 2 or 3 hours to do it. Unseasoned coders were not able to complete 1/4 of it (mainly because they were not using the right techniques), and great coders could complete it in about an hour. We turned down many candidates who seemed very good on paper, but who were not all that great in reality. Carl Mercier Geek entrepreneurs, visit my blog! [^]
-
Check this out by Scott http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhatGreatNETDevelopersOughtToKnowMoreNETInterviewQuestions.aspx[^]
hmm... I'm not sure I think questions such as these are good for determining whether a candidate is the right man (or woman) for the job. I'm sure there are many very able developers out there who wouldn't be able to answer half the questions on the list. I really don't like the idea that we as developers are expected to know stuff like this - if I need to know what the maximum amount of memory a process can access (I think its about 4 gig, but the address bus may have widened without me noticing) I'd look it up. Not surprisingly I've never needed to know it, and I doubt the person interviewing me has either. It's time to get over the macho tech thing which exists in IT. I think it would be a good start if the people conducting the interviews didn't start by asking questions which they were unsure of the answers to themselves. Regards, Rob Philpott.
-
IMHO, these questions are just ridiculous. I've been around computers for 20 years, and I don't know what those ASCII codes represent. In fact, I don't even get the point of knowing ASCII codes by heart. If I ever need this information, I'll just Google for it. The best way to know if somebody is a great candidate is have him code a little bit. What we did was pretty simple, we put requirements on paper and asked the candidates to code a small application based on the requirements and give them 2 or 3 hours to do it. Unseasoned coders were not able to complete 1/4 of it (mainly because they were not using the right techniques), and great coders could complete it in about an hour. We turned down many candidates who seemed very good on paper, but who were not all that great in reality. Carl Mercier Geek entrepreneurs, visit my blog! [^]
Well, if you've been around computer for 20 years and you don't know that a space is character code 32, I wouldn't want you working for me.... Regards, Rob Philpott.
-
I attend quite a few interviews as a freelance developer, and they seem to come in two flavours. Firstly there's the informal 'chat' approach possibly with a small technical test and then there's the 'you're going to have to impress us son' full on technical grilling. As a candidate obviously I prefer the former as the subject is just so huge that however good you are there is always something they can draw on which you're not going to be 100% on. My old boss used to tell me that aptitude was far more important than specific knowledge. Smart man. One thing I've never been asked, but I think would be good thing to ask would be to see how far the candidate can recite their powers of 2, and see if they know what various common ASCII codes are - 32, 48, 65, 97 etc. Although this might seem off-track and bitty and has no particular relevance to .NET, I think this is a good way to instantly gauge how long someone has been around computers. These things flow for seasoned developers. Non-tech, I quite liked the question 'what is the angle between the hour and minute hand at twenty to eight' as well, but that's probably just being mean... Regards, Rob Philpott.
Rob Philpott wrote:
'what is the angle between the hour and minute hand at twenty to eight'
Isn't that about 10 degrees, though. ;P Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] Remember that in Texas, Gun Control is hitting what you aim at. [Richard Stringer] Nice sig! [Tim Deveaux on Matt Newman's sig with a quote from me]
-
Rob Philpott wrote:
'what is the angle between the hour and minute hand at twenty to eight'
Isn't that about 10 degrees, though. ;P Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] Remember that in Texas, Gun Control is hitting what you aim at. [Richard Stringer] Nice sig! [Tim Deveaux on Matt Newman's sig with a quote from me]
Spot on Sir. I believe the point of the question (its not mine) is to see if they shout zero straight away. I can just about do the sum in my head now, but wouldn't fancy it under stressful interview conditions much... Regards, Rob Philpott.
-
Well, if you've been around computer for 20 years and you don't know that a space is character code 32, I wouldn't want you working for me.... Regards, Rob Philpott.
That's fine because I don't think I would like to work for you anyways! How often do you ALT-32 to write a space exactly? Carl Mercier Geek entrepreneurs, visit my blog! [^]
-
We have a position open for a person with 3-5 years of experience, and are conducting interviews. Can you guys please suggest some relevant questions? The candidate's primary responsibilities will be coding, with a bit of design thrown in. Work will be in .net, mostly C# with some ASP .net. Yes, I *did* google for sample questions, but most of them seem cliched, and chances are that any candidate would have done the same. I'm interested in knowing what kind of questions CPians would ask, as our level generally seems to be a notch or two higher than average. :cool: Both technical questions and non-technical questions are appreciated. :rose: TIA! Cheers, Vikram.
"When I read in books about a "base class", I figured this was the class that was at the bottom of the inheritence tree. It's the "base", right? Like the base of a pyramid." - Marc Clifton.
Q1: If you had a cat that was round, and had to fit it into a square hole, would you need to drop a manhole cover on the cat first? Q2: Have you ever appeared on a reality TV show? Were you fired? Q3: Compare and contrast the differences between a C# virtual property and a Java mutable accessor. Seriously, best of luck with this! :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
-
hmm... I'm not sure I think questions such as these are good for determining whether a candidate is the right man (or woman) for the job. I'm sure there are many very able developers out there who wouldn't be able to answer half the questions on the list. I really don't like the idea that we as developers are expected to know stuff like this - if I need to know what the maximum amount of memory a process can access (I think its about 4 gig, but the address bus may have widened without me noticing) I'd look it up. Not surprisingly I've never needed to know it, and I doubt the person interviewing me has either. It's time to get over the macho tech thing which exists in IT. I think it would be a good start if the people conducting the interviews didn't start by asking questions which they were unsure of the answers to themselves. Regards, Rob Philpott.
It's time to get over the macho tech thing which exists in IT. I think it would be a good start if the people conducting the interviews didn't start by asking questions which they were unsure of the answers to themselves. Amen to that. Aptitude is much more important than memorizing a fact or two. Jeremy Falcon
-
We have a position open for a person with 3-5 years of experience, and are conducting interviews. Can you guys please suggest some relevant questions? The candidate's primary responsibilities will be coding, with a bit of design thrown in. Work will be in .net, mostly C# with some ASP .net. Yes, I *did* google for sample questions, but most of them seem cliched, and chances are that any candidate would have done the same. I'm interested in knowing what kind of questions CPians would ask, as our level generally seems to be a notch or two higher than average. :cool: Both technical questions and non-technical questions are appreciated. :rose: TIA! Cheers, Vikram.
"When I read in books about a "base class", I figured this was the class that was at the bottom of the inheritence tree. It's the "base", right? Like the base of a pyramid." - Marc Clifton.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: Bought a House! Judah Himango
-
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: Bought a House! Judah Himango
Repost. See the 'Kannan Kalyanaraman' message. Couldn't resist. ;P
This signature was created by "Code Project Quoter".
-
That's fine because I don't think I would like to work for you anyways! How often do you ALT-32 to write a space exactly? Carl Mercier Geek entrepreneurs, visit my blog! [^]
Carl Mercier wrote:
That's fine because I don't think I would like to work for you anyways! How often do you ALT-32 to write a space exactly?
agreed. I used to know a decent chunk of hte ascii codeset in highschool because turbo pascal didn't provide any sort of keycode enum so I needed to know the values of enter, del, etc if I wanted to trap them directly. Now I'm working in a language that does (C#) and have forgotten almost all of it as unneeded trivia.
-
Repost. See the 'Kannan Kalyanaraman' message. Couldn't resist. ;P
This signature was created by "Code Project Quoter".
:doh:
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: Bought a House! Judah Himango
-
We have a position open for a person with 3-5 years of experience, and are conducting interviews. Can you guys please suggest some relevant questions? The candidate's primary responsibilities will be coding, with a bit of design thrown in. Work will be in .net, mostly C# with some ASP .net. Yes, I *did* google for sample questions, but most of them seem cliched, and chances are that any candidate would have done the same. I'm interested in knowing what kind of questions CPians would ask, as our level generally seems to be a notch or two higher than average. :cool: Both technical questions and non-technical questions are appreciated. :rose: TIA! Cheers, Vikram.
"When I read in books about a "base class", I figured this was the class that was at the bottom of the inheritence tree. It's the "base", right? Like the base of a pyramid." - Marc Clifton.
One technique I want to try is to tell the person ahead of time to create a short 10 minute presentation on how he or she solved a recent programming challenge with the caveat that they must use their boss in this situation as a reference (and then call that boss up later to see if the person was telling the truth--I despise people who take credit for someone else's work.) I had a coworker who did this at a previous company and said is was very successful. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke