Personally I think that most of these questions are horrible and as somebody being interviewed, I'd be a little bit annoyed at a company trying to make me jump through hoops. I'm sure there are tons of developers that can sort arrays like there is no tomorrow, but sometimes I would like to work with people that can create software. People that write tests, are able to set up a sane build process, keep the clutter to a minimum and make nice APIs.
What I'm looking for in coders is passion. Ask people for their personal projects and let them talk about it! Ask for a Github account upfront and look at weather they commit fixes to other projects and show initiative, look at their personal toy projects, look at weather or not they're able to work with complete strangers and improve software just because they like doing it.
Some people might not have a Github account. But honestly, most of the people I like working with have one.
I've stopped a couple interviews mid-process when it became evident that the interviewer was going to focus on this sort of crap. Their shock is its own reward.
The interview process provides very little information to both parties about each other. Both of you have to make a decision on what you know. It is entirely possible that walking away from such an interview would, in retrospect, be a mistake.
However, it's a hot market. For every company that sucks at interviews, there's a company that's good at it. Why put up with it? Why waste hours?
Once upon a time, I was interviewing at two companies. The first, was a great interview..the seasoned and experienced found/CEO got me excited and interested and really made me feel that they were equally excited and interested in having me on board. They asked smart questions, they had obviously spent time reading my blog and looking at my public profile.
At the other company, it was painful...for both of us. I felt..like a chore that had to be done...going through a checklist of increasingly irrelevant questions. You could challenge the question, but the answer was "we want to see how you work through problems"....which is silly...are you so lazy that you can't come up with relevant questions that do that? Plenty of other people have.
My point is that, like everything else, some companies are clearly 10x better at interviewing/hiring than others. And, again like everything else, the shitty companies/interviewers have no clue how shitty they are.
Surely that might say something about the individuals and companies as a whole? So, again, why put up with it?
Bravo! Part of the reason HR is so broken is that few will speak up when exposed to this kind of crap. Thus the crap peddlers (I used to be one of the trick question kind, merely because I was emulating others) are left with the idea that they're following "best practices" or some such nonsense.
Job candidates should be turning down companies as often as companies should be declining to make offers.
If you're not ready to walk away, then you're desperate and you're going to end up in a crappy job.
I regret letting my last interview for a web development job turn into a "reverse this list"-type questions. An hour completely wasted, and lowered my opinion of the company I was interviewing with (formerly high)
I think each company has their own recruitment process, and it depends on the kind of job openings they have. I recently had my Google interview which was totally algorithmic. Despite of a number of projects and research papers in my resume, the interviewer did not ask me any questions pertaining to those projects.
But at the same time no way did it appear to me that the interviewer was not looking for passion in me. The questions that were asked from me probed whether I had the ability to respond to tricky problems, the ability to understand the intricacy of the problem and ability to respond.
At the same time the interviewer also tried to gauge my general skills, whether I would be able to contribute in a project or not. So I feel everybody has their own method of hiring. Particularly college graduates may not have github accounts to show that they have contributed to different projects. Sometimes I feel it is the only way to judge freshers in the sense they may not have a lot of projects to show, but they do have what it takes.
Getting responses about those projects isn't interesting. By now all the answers you will give will essentially be committed to rote memory, so the interviewer won't be seeing any actual thinking going on. It's also hard to gauge which contributions came from you, or from the people around you, based on your responses and your resume -- most people are happy to steal credit if they think it won't actually hurt anybody.
> I'm sure there are tons of developers that can sort arrays like there is no tomorrow, but sometimes I would like to work with people that can create software.
Companies should search for developers that can do both.
What I'm looking for in coders is passion. Ask people for their personal projects and let them talk about it! Ask for a Github account upfront and look at weather they commit fixes to other projects and show initiative, look at their personal toy projects, look at weather or not they're able to work with complete strangers and improve software just because they like doing it.
Some people might not have a Github account. But honestly, most of the people I like working with have one.