Interviewing for Intelligence
refer.ly
Interviewing for Intelligence
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#2Confidence:
If asked a question completely outside their domain of expertise, they wouldn't bail on it but instead start trying to find an answer.
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#3I've heard the Singapore civil service, renown for recruiting smart people, have what they call the 'helicopter test'. Specifically they are looking for people who are just as able to converse intelligently flying 1000 feet above a topic as they are skimming the surface and getting into the details, and will specifically test candidates on both perspectives and their ability to fly between the two. Seems well aligned with what you are looking for.
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#4> It's surprising to me how many candidates explain these algorithms' performance as if the hash table was a magic black box that instantly works. Here they've lost the tree for the forest! They know what hash table is, at least at a high level, but forget that it has specific implications.
A lot of advice I've read about interviewing suggests that a candidate should leave answers open and provide room for the interviewer to poll for more info. I'm curious to know if the author goes out of their way to poll about the specifics of the hash table implementation?
In fact, one of my favorite interviews in recent memory was a hash table discussion not unlike the one the author is hoping for. I was happy to find an interviewer whose questions balanced theory with practice and was happy to drive to a solution with them. However, I wouldn't have offered up this analysis without first understanding that this is where the interviewer wanted to drive the discussion. Every good programmer knows that premature optimization is the devil.
The author may instead be trying to raise the point that its up to the discretion of the interviewee to see that the hash table implementation is the critical performance detail. e.g. gotta do open addressing here b/c our hashing function has weird edge cases where it collides all the time and chained hash would bring us closer towards a log(n) traversal on that edge case.
However, in my limited interviewing experience, interview problems such as this are often designed to be open-ended conversation rollers moreso than where implementation specifics like this are able to jump out easily.
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#5Wait, when did refer.ly pivot from being a startup helping people with affiliate marketing and social shopping, to an online magazine?
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#6Wait, when did refer.ly pivot from being a startup helping people with affiliate marketing and social shopping, to an online magazine?
i have the same question - i could have sworn just the other month when the betapunch post came out referly was still the referral tracking system
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#7Confidence: If asked a question completely outside their domain of expertise, they wouldn't bail on it but instead start trying to find an answer.
It's a weird balance that people are looking for confidence and intelligence at the same time.
Some intelligent people are humble about the subjects they lack expertise in. Doesn't looking for confidence carries a risk of finding people who sound better than they are?
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#8I've heard the Singapore civil service, renown for recruiting smart people, have what they call the 'helicopter test'. Specifically they are looking for people who are just as able to converse intelligently flying 1000 feet above a topic as they are skimming the surface and getting into the details, and will specifically test candidates on both perspectives and their ability to fly between the two. Seems well aligned…
anecdotal
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#9the author seems to be in the business of creating fairly simple internet apps, so I'm not sure why his interviews would ever need to deal with the implementation of hash tables...
Re: Interviewing for Intelligence
#10Confidence: If asked a question completely outside their domain of expertise, they wouldn't bail on it but instead start trying to find an answer.
That's also the sign of a bs'r
You know, the person who knows nothing about a topic, but will talk for hours on it?
There should never be shame in admitting "I don't know" and then following it up with, "but if faced with that I would..."