A fatal interview flaw

[jminnis]

We've interviewed a few people at work for C++ programming jobs. One of the requests in our interviews is for the applicant to provide sample code. That's pretty standard and it gives us an idea of the applicant's capabilities.

Something that shocks me is the number of people who cannot answer either of the following questions:

1. If you were

Comments

[grumpy_sysadmin]

Back when I had the power to do so at a former employer, I dispaired of ever finding a job applicant who lived up to my expectations of basic knowledge for systems administration. I think that had a lot to do with the lack of glamor at the employer, mind, but it was really demoralizing to ask someone literally three times my age two questions and be sure I was wasting my damn time because I'd never hire him.

On the coding front... I think the inability to answer those two questions certainly rules out hiring the bastard, but I'd suggest that it's understandable under the context of someone used to coding to so specific a spec as to have had creativity beat out of him. I can see myself stammering for three good choices in response to the second, but I agree that anybody's who's not an automaton should be able to come up with something.

Also, hi! (I'm sure you can figure this out.)