Software Development Interviews
Having been on a number of these interviews throughout my career, I strongly believe that these interviews need a major overhaul. Often times, it seems the goal of the interviewer in the technical portion of the interview is to trick or stump the person being interviewed, and this is under the guise of ‘we want to see how you approach a problem’. I don’t mind at all being tested for my problem solving skills, however, the problems that are often presented are notreal world problems.
For example, in my entire career (over 15 years), I have never, ever, ever once needed to find an ancestor node in a binary tree. Nor, in reality, have I needed to traverse a binary tree. So, presenting this as a problem to solve is completely ludicrous in an interview. It doesn’t tell the interviewer anything when I can’t solve the problem in five minutes except that I have zero experience with binary trees.
Here’s where the need for a major overhaul comes in. Instead of irrelevant problems, how about presenting a real situation that you, as the potential employer, are facing or have faced, and then see how the candidate approaches that problem. After all, are you trying to hire someone who memorized an algorithm? Or are you trying to hire someone that can come up with practical solutions to real world problems?
