"Pen And Paper" interviews - ISerializable - Roy Osherove's Blog

"Pen And Paper" interviews

[Update: just wanted to say that there is a lot I don't agree with in Ido's post. Some of the things he lists there are quite legitimate in my view. I wrote this post beccause it reminded me of some stuff *I* displike about interviews, nothing more]
 
Ido writes about bad interviews. I had my own thoughs on this subject. but I wanted to add a point:
 
One thing I don't really get is the Pen and Paper interview. Why on earth would I, as an interviewer, want to see a candidate write code on a piece of paper? There are many issues in this.
To me this is nothing more that making life hard on the candidate. If you want to see them struggle with no intellisense just let them type in notepad. Heck, I 'd rather see how fast my candidate types, how they handle the computer and keyboard, how they navigate the software, I want to see just how proficient they are in the tools they are supposed to use everyday. Notepad is the least I would give anyone. Make them write code by hand? Sadism.
 
Also - there is a lot of good in watching a person handle VS.Net (as they would in your real production environment). The more proficient they are in using VS.Net, the better you know just how much *real* hands-on expirience they have with it. Nothing says “I have very little experience in this“ than a person who couldn't find the “Output“ window in less than a second IMHO.
 
Now, I agree, an interview should not just be about what you know, but about how you deal with *not knowing*. Fair enough. Give them the tools, give them a problem, and watch them *try* to solve it. See how they do in the real world. Hard? you bet. Stressfull? oh yes. Real-world? Definitely. I woudln't expect anything less from a person who I intend to hire.
 
Published Wednesday, June 09, 2004 1:12 AM by RoyOsherove
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Comments

Tuesday, June 08, 2004 6:55 PM by Derick Bailey

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

In the interviews that I've given in the last 6 months, we tortured our applicants by giving them VB6, a single table MS Access database and told them to write a class that reads / writes a single record in the database... all with 4 team members sitting there watching. 8) talk about sadism.

of the 10 people that we interviewed... for a VB6 position, who were supposed to have at least 4 years of VB6 experience... only 1 guy actually knew what a class was and wrote a working program. we hired him.

for the interviews that i've done recently - 2 BrainBench.com tests, and a "walk me through these 500 lines of code / stored procedures" got me a new job. i prefer the method that i went through.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004 7:20 PM by Scott Galloway

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

We did a 20 questions pen-and-paper test asking some more esoteric points about C# / ASP.NET. We then gave a fairly simple piece of code riddled with bugs; logic, syntax and basic implementation (intentionally :)) and asked candidates to fix it (using full Visual Studio)- then we asked them to take us through what the code did - this was important as the job was client-facing . This didn't take long but let us whittle down candidates based on technical prowess fairly quickly - this was for a fairly senior job and around 5% of the candidates even came close to passing our little test.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004 8:55 PM by Anatoly Lubarsky

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

I know that in Microsoft they usually test you on the white board. Besides the way the person handles the environment can tell nothing abot him from the professional point of view :)
Wednesday, June 09, 2004 1:39 AM by laxmi

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

asking candidates to code on notepad is truly a problem.
the point is most interviwers themselves would google some piece of code and use Vstudio or any special tool to write code.
Instead I would love to have an interview where in incorrect code is given and candidate is asked to fix it or atleast identify errors
Wednesday, June 09, 2004 8:21 AM by yn

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

Why would you judge someone based on how they handle VS.NET or any other specific tool?

There are plenty of other development tools for .NET and you may lose a perfectly fine developer just because he or she chose to go with another development environment (one that probably hogs much less HD space, CPU and memory).
Wednesday, June 09, 2004 8:40 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

yn: I was merely stating something that I would check if I knew that developer has working experience with vs.net. If they don't, and my company works with that tool as the standard, I also want to know this, since "learning curve" is also something one should consider for a candidate.
But I agree it is not the *only* element I would check. But it's definitely a "red flag" for a lot of candidates (999% of devs I know work on vs.net so that test would be valid for them).
Wednesday, June 09, 2004 12:16 PM by Shmulik Primes

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/primess/archive/2004/06/09/15947.aspx
Wednesday, June 09, 2004 2:14 PM by GuyIncognito

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

Once again... RoyO says what we've all been thinking... ;)
Friday, June 11, 2004 2:35 PM by E.

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

As a candidate, I simply despise paper tests and think it's an outdated process...are paper tests testing one's programming skills or compiling ability?

Watching a candidate at work, either on paper or on a compiler, is very pressuring and definitely unrealistic...a manager/team leader doesn't look at the programmer while he/she is coding in real life work, so why do it in an interview?

The pin-point questions are a valid method IMO, but I think that asking a candidate about little nuances that only 5% of the coding population know of is a little harsh..

One of the most underrated things in programming interviews is personality tests and personal questions, out of the coding scope. Programmers are real people, not robots - get it through your head recruiters!! We too have a life and don't find coding the only passion...so check out how your candidate is as a person as well...

Monday, June 21, 2004 8:55 PM by Eric

# re: "Pen And Paper" interviews

If I were in the "hiring position", what I would do is put the interviewee in a small room with a computer loaded with VS.NET, MSDN Library, and a web browser. Then give them a small utility/app to create. The GUI would already be done, since often times, this is the piece that causes people to spend a lot of time (some of us wind up trying to create the perfect UI... usually without much luck).

Give them about 30 minutes, and watch them through a window in the door periodically. This allows them all of the tools that they can realistically expect to use in a day-to-day environment. If they were using "chat" to get answers from someone else, then they would score less (if at all), however, if they are using MSDN library, Google, and forums to find code snippets, and then successfully integrating them into the app, I would score them higher, because this is the way the real world works.

Later,

Eric