Re:Why do interviewers use "riddles"? (Score:5, Insightful) 
by Samrobb on Wednesday July 24, @12:30AM (#3942384) 
(User #12731 Info | http://www.pghgeeks.org/ | Last Journal: Monday January 14, @04:21PM)  

A friend of mine refers to these as "bright bulb" questions. OK, you've demonstrated your grasp of C/C++ or whatever other skills we're primarily interested in hiring you for. These questions are there to give an interviewer some insight into whether or not you can think through abstract problems... how you anser them helps answer questions the interviweer has about you, like:

• Are you creative?
• Do you assume non-technical prolems are trivial or uninteresting?
• When there's no obvious answer, do you give up?
• Will you ask for more information?
• If it's not provided, do you take a stab at solving the problem anyways?
• How do you go about solving the problem (back to front, front to back, middle outwards)?
• Do you eliminate obvious incorrect answers first, or try and find a logical starting point?
• If you come close to an answer, do you try to handwave away part of the solution?
• For some problems, do you see the obvious parallels with algorithms/problems you've encountered in CS?
• Yes, you can answers these sorts of things by asking technical questions... but in that case, you're often trying to evaluate so much - skill set, facility with a language, natural ability, problem solving, thinking pattern, creativity - that it's reasonable to remove the technical aspect and focus on straight problem solving methodology and ability.

Finally, as an added bonus... anyone can ask these sorts of questions. Your HR person, the VP of engineering, a product manager... anyone. So you don't neccesarily have to give up time in the core technical interview sessions in order to ask these sorts of questions.

Re:Why do interviewers use "riddles"? (Score:4, Insightful) 
by Samrobb on Wednesday July 24, @12:55AM (#3942490) 
(User #12731 Info | http://www.pghgeeks.org/ | Last Journal: Monday January 14, @04:21PM)  

I don't view wasting a candidate's time with irrelevant questions from unqualified interviewers as a "bonus".

Huh. Well, there you have it... you just blew the interview. Overall, your attritude is lousy - you're arrogant, rude, dishonest (nice of you to omit an important part of my comment in your quote, above), but even more so, you aparently consider the people you would be working for - the VP of engineering and the product manager - to be "unqualified interviewers".

Small hint: disdain for your potential employer is rarely considered a "must hire" quality.

From: Matt Bull
To: wwu@ocf.berkeley.edu
7/29/2002

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From: Kiana Jones
To: wwu@ocf.berkeley.edu
Subject: I think I love you
7/29/2002

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