In my 5 years at Monster, I've probably interviewed at least 75+ candidates. So, here's an insider tip if you're going to interview for an engineering job at Monster:
If I ask you a question, it probably isn't because I need to know the answer, it's because I need to know if YOU know the answer.
It astounds me that people will throw the worst kinds of manufactured answers at me, presumably with the hope that I won't know better. What are these people thinking? In most cases, that is immediate disqualification. Please, just say "I don't know" or "I haven't had a need to work with that yet" - ANYTHING except lying. It can be difficult to admit not knowing something, especially under the pressure of an interview, but believe me, you will be far better served by the admission than by trying to fake it. None of us can know everything; I do not expect "omniscient" to be listed as a skill on your resume.
Sorry for the rant. I feel much better now.
My typical role in the interview process is technical “griller”. I have a cheat sheet I typically bring along with me that highlights common questions/topics I might ask candidates, which I select from according to their stated experience. Er, no, I'm not going to post it and no, none of the questions come from “How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?” :)
I find that by having a common set of starting questions, I can more easily compare the abilities and experience of multiple candidates. I rarely resort to whiteboard coding, I find that discussion is generally enough to discover strengths and weaknesses. I'm also not a fan of asking the logic puzzle questions (though I personally find them a fun challenge.)
Do you interview candidates? What works best for you?
-Chris
This Wednesday night (July 14th), I delivered a session to the Boston .NET User Group entitled “Unit Testing and Test-Driven Development in .NET”. We're working on getting the slides posted to the site, but in the meantime, since a number of people have requested the links that were in the slides, I've added them below.
Thanks to everyone who attended. I hope you're going to give unit testing and TDD a try in your projects!
Please feel free to contact me (use the “Contact” link at top-left, or leave blog feedback below) if you have any questions.
-Chris
NUnit
Addins for NUnit
Unit Testing and TDD Resources
Mock Objects
Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Other Tools
Books
UPDATE: Corrected “Quick Start” document link
Benjamin Mitchell has a must-read report on the Unit Testing “Birds of a Feather” session at TechEd Europe which featured James Newkirk.
http://benjaminm.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=fdd292d0-a324-4178-b46e-f02a114bde74
Great job, Benjamin!
-Chris