Interview Coding Tests

markonm

I'm trying to get back into IT after a number of years out doing other things.

Obviously my skills are a bit rusty and I am finding that I can't remember things that I should know. Maybe the internet is to blame as there is a permanent source of information at your fingertips, why would you bother to remember things?

Another change is that there seems to be coding tests as part of any interview. I've made an unholy mess of two I did recently. Mainly because of time constraints, not knowing what they were looking for and not having specific bits of information memorised.

What do people feel about these tests? The best thing I could have done with the last one was not write a line of code at all, and spent the time explaining how I would go about the problem - identifying the critical areas and assumptions. I just can't write code in a vacuum -I need to know what it's for, what environment it's tragetted at, what the CSFs are, etc.

As an example, could you write, in java, an implementation of the fastest sort you know for a variable sized integer array. You can't use the SDK or the internet - in 30 mins.

conor.hogan.2

A minority of the places I got an interview for allowed Internet and/or an IDE access.

Keep applying to places the right job will come up.

matrim

markonm wrote: »

I'm trying to get back into IT after a number of years out doing other things.

Obviously my skills are a bit rusty and I am finding that I can't remember things that I should know. Maybe the internet is to blame as there is a permanent source of information at your fingertips, why would you bother to remember things?

Another change is that there seems to be coding tests as part of any interview. I've made an unholy mess of two I did recently. Mainly because of time constraints, not knowing what they were looking for and not having specific bits of information memorised.

What do people feel about these tests? The best thing I could have done with the last one was not write a line of code at all, and spent the time explaining how I would go about the problem - identifying the critical areas and assumptions. I just can't write code in a vacuum -I need to know what it's for, what environment it's tragetted at, what the CSFs are, etc.

As an example, could you write, in java, an implementation of the fastest sort you know for a variable sized integer array. You can't use the SDK or the internet - in 30 mins.

They are annoying but almost a pre-requisite for most roles today.

For the one's that need an implementation, like your example, most of the time they don't care if your Java's a bit off, e.g. you misspell a variable etc as they know that an IDE will sort that in the real world. They just want you to show that you know what sorting is appropriate and that you know roughly how it works. I've gotten away with replacing large chunks with pseudo-code without any problems.

Feathers

matrim wrote: »

They are annoying but almost a pre-requisite for most roles today.

For the one's that need an implementation, like your example, most of the time they don't care if your Java's a bit off, e.g. you misspell a variable etc as they know that an IDE will sort that in the real world. They just want you to show that you know what sorting is appropriate and that you know roughly how it works. I've gotten away with replacing large chunks with pseudo-code without any problems.

+1, I'd say it's more about how you can talk through what you've written afterwards. For a front-end role I was asked to write html with a doctype — I don't memorise doctypes, I look them up once at the start of a project & then go from there. But put that down & the guys were happy enough. So long as you can talk about the bigger picture when they quiz you on your answers.

Depends on the place I suppose though. But look at it this way — if it's the type of place that really cares that much, what would they be like to work for?

Colonel Panic

I would never come down on someone for making a mess of an implementation during a coding test. It's all about watching them work through the problem and explain what they're doing, not spew out a canned answer.

While they are annoying, I would be more worried about interviewing for a place that didn't do a coding test, even for more senior roles.

folan

i hate them, im dreadful at remembering specifics about languages. last time i had to do one I just wrote the pseudo code and made a note that I couldnt remember the language specifics (i was left alone for it).

i didnt get the job, but nothing in the feedback was mentioned about the coding (i dont have any foreign languages and they wanted that more than code). so i get the feeling that it was more that i know the logic than the actual code, but thats not always the case i hear.