Interviews

everdead.ie

Hi Folks I'm looking for some ideas on how Interviews for software Engineers go these days.

I have an interview next week for a software graduate (Grad) role in an Irish company. All I have been told is that it is a 90 minute interview, mixture of technical and competency questions.


I'm worried because while I think I'm good enough for the role but I am afraid of not being adaquetly prepared.

ManannanMacLir

90 minutes? Ouch! Can you name the company?

conor.hogan.2

From my experience they vary from writing code on a computer in plain text (web, small-ish company), an IDE (JEE) and on paper (web, smaller company) and/or a competency test.

Is the test 90 minutes or is the test 30-60 and the rest is a HR or technical interview?

everdead.ie

ManannanMacLir wrote: »

90 minutes? Ouch! Can you name the company?

Not yet I'll let you know after the interview, I just am trying to keep this under my hat until it's done.

everdead.ie

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

From my experience they vary from writing code on a computer in plain text (web, small-ish company), an IDE (JEE) and on paper (web, smaller company) and/or a competency test.

Is the test 90 minutes or is the test 30-60 and the rest is a HR or technical interview?

I did a technical phone interview, this is meant to be a 90 minute technical and competency face to face interview I wasn't given anymore details which is what has me unnerved not knowing what is coming up.

nbar12

I had a 90min interview for First Derivatives up in Newry for an IT position that I can't really remember what it was tbh (I clearly didn't get the job). This was for a 6 month internship if it makes any difference. There was 12 of us altogether, split into 3 different groups. Firstly, we had to do a presentation which lasted approx 10mins with the 3 randomers you just met. This was followed by a programming exam. It wasn't done of a computer but we were given 6 questions and had to write the code for them. Lastly, there was two interviews. The first one was a 10min Q&A, these questions ranged from who invented the light bulb to the chairman of RBS. Then it was a normal interview asking me the usual questions...what can i bring to the company, why should they hire me etc

I know this probably has no relevance to your interview but hopefully it might help.

Best of luck in it!

conor.hogan.2

There is not a lot you can do in a week, just brush up on what is on the job spec.

Dave!

There's plenty you can do in a week... If he knows the kind of topics that might come up, then that's heaps of time to refresh your college stuff, etc.

Genghiz Cohen

And those little bastard questions like:
Find if a number is odd without the modulus operator.
Or use recursion for find the number at index n in the Fibonacci sequence.

2 I got in a recent interview.

nbar12

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

And those little bastard questions like:
Find if a number is odd without the modulus operator.
Or use recursion for find the number at index n in the Fibonacci sequence.

2 I got in a recent interview.

yeah or write a program where it says "Hello World"

haha

everdead.ie

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

And those little bastard questions like:
Find if a number is odd without the modulus operator.
Or use recursion for find the number at index n in the Fibonacci sequence.

2 I got in a recent interview.

The odd number one is good I remember someone else that got that before, working full time in another job at the mo but the plan is to cram for it!

CrazyFish

If its for a grad role make sure you know any projects you done in college well because you will be asked about them.

Dave!

^This.

Got stung on that by an American company a couple of years ago. Figured they'd focus on my work experience (I had some relevant experience), and my portfolio/personal projects, but they barely mentioned my work It was excruciating having to answer questions about the decision making process in a project I did 3 years ago, and which I barely gave a sh*t about! That was a long interview......

solarith

Dave! wrote: »

^This.

Got stung on that by an American company a couple of years ago. Figured they'd focus on my work experience (I had some relevant experience), and my portfolio/personal projects, but they barely mentioned my work It was excruciating having to answer questions about the decision making process in a project I did 3 years ago, and which I barely gave a sh*t about! That was a long interview......

Also, know your CV inside out. If you have any skill written down on your CV and they ask you which you do not know the answer, you're fragged.

G-Money

I agree with previous posters, know your CV well. I hate that feeling when they say "I see you did x, y and z in Company A, can you tell me a bit more about that?" And in your head all you think is "Did I really write that? I wonder what that means?".

Also be prepared for the usual HR style stuff:

Why do you want to work here?
What appeals to you about this job?
What makes you think you'd fit in well here?
Why do you want to leave your current job? I'm assuming this isn't much of an issue if you are a grad as I'm guessing this is your first job?
Ever had to work with difficult people? If so, how did you handle them?

Technical interviews are hateful. I've found that I spend loads of time brushing up on programming stuff, concepts and anything else I feel they might ask only to find that 9 times out of 10, the stuff they ask me is always something else that I didn't look up. To be honest it's a complete coin-toss sometimes as to what technical stuff they will ask. It's a bit like playing that game "pin the tail on the donkey".

All you can do is read-up on what you think they might ask. There's probably a job spec so look to see what technologies they use and are looking for. If you have knowledge of those, brush up on them so you know what's what. If it's stuff you don't know, read a bit about it and demonstrate to them that even though you're not an expert in technology Y, you did some research and found out this that and the other and always say you're willing to learn those new skills.

Read up on the company too. I did that for my first job and I'm still convinced it help me land it.

Also make sure you ask questions. I always ask if it's a new role that's open or if someone left. If they left, I occasionally ask why. I think that's a fair question and they always ask me why I want to leave my job

Good luck with the interview!

philologos

everdead.ie wrote: »

Hi Folks I'm looking for some ideas on how Interviews for software Engineers go these days.

I have an interview next week for a software graduate (Grad) role in an Irish company. All I have been told is that it is a 90 minute interview, mixture of technical and competency questions.


I'm worried because while I think I'm good enough for the role but I am afraid of not being adaquetly prepared.

It depends on the company.

Mainly what I've been asked is generally about the fundamentals of the particular programming language I was working in and other previous experience. One of the most difficult ones I've done involved being grilled about C# for about an hour and a half. Generally, it is mostly theoretical.

Occasionally they may ask you to do code puzzles on pen and paper, such as checking for a palindrome or converting one array format into another.

And yeah, the HR stuff is important as others have said before me.

Francie Barrett

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79144029&postcount=7

I have done a few graduate interviews for Java developers. Here are some of the questions I would ask.

What are the main principles of object orientated programming?

What is the difference between method overloading and overriding?

What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class?

What is the difference between the super and this keyword?

What is the difference between a private and protected variable?

What is the difference between a GET and POST HTTP method?

I would also give a relatively simple programming test in which I would ask a candidate to write code to reverse a string or to sort a numeric array. I would say over 50% of candidates we give this kind of test to fail it.

If you're a graduate, most interviewers should realize that you probably don't have the depth of experience to know stuff like why you would use StringBuffer over String or the differences between the DOM and SAX XML parser. The important thing the interviewer will want to know is that you have the principles of OO programming, that you have a rudimentary knowledge of Java and that if given a problem, you are able to tackle it.

Quoted from an old post.

Like I said, as a graduate, it's unlikely that you are going to be seriously grilled on a technical subject. If the job spec mentions anything about Java or OO programming, then it's imperative that you know all those basic principles first of all.

If you're going to be given a programming test, then it's likely that it will be a simple brain teaser. If you get a test like this, make sure you have lots of comments to explain what you were trying to do. If the program doesn't work or fails to compile, do not panic! Very often, you will have to present your code afterwards. I have given job offers to candidates whose applications failed to compile/weren't complete, provided their reasoning was correct.

Make sure you know your projects back to front. If you mentioned in your CV that you worked on a Java app that worked with an XML back-end, then I will ask questions on how that worked. If you did some silly project or module from 2 years ago that's on your cv, also be prepared to talk about it.

Finally, when you're in an interview, you have to relax. I know it's easy to say, but when I am looking to hire a guy, I don't want a quiet introvert. If you feel yourself getting flustered, pause for a second and slow your speech down. Make sure to smile lots, engage in any smalltalk, or crack a joke about something safe like the weather. Interviews are a stressful experience, but it should never show in a candidate

komodosp

Wow 90 minutes is a long interview! But maybe there will only be 1 instead of the usual 2. I've been to a couple over the last few years and they all tended to be fairly relaxed affairs but 30 - 40 mins speaking mainly about my work experience... But then I have been in the IT field for about 12 years so maybe it's different for graduates.

But they had very little technical stuff except in some cases them telling me what I'd be doing and asking how I'd do it, like how I'd implement a voucher system on an e-commerce website (it was wordpress so it didn't have one built in) but not much in the "exam question" type.

Funnily enough I did a phone interview last year (my first one ever) and it was only 30 minutes long... Not being used to phone interviews I stuttered and stammered my way through a lot of the questions... And I got the job without ever even meeting them in person! I might add we were both in Limerick so it wasn't like they didn't want to call me half way around the world just for an interview...

CrazyFish

Last couple of places I have interviewed for have been at least 3 interviews which drags the interview process on for at least a month. Would much rather if they organised a day where you do the three interviews in one. Saves on travelling and time wasted.

Sparks

komodosp wrote: »

Wow 90 minutes is a long interview!

Not so much - the interviews for google can run all day long and go for more than 90 minutes at a time (they string multiple interviews together).
(Longer isn't better in this case though).

Personally, I use my CV as a guide when prepping; when I've read over my notes for past projects and gotten refreshed on them, I'll dig into what the company is doing (but most of the time that kind of thing isn't readily available in useful levels of detail) or try to contact people I know who work there or worked there to get more data (without breaking NDAs, obviously...).

All that said, you will get curveballs. I once spent half of an (ultimately successful) interview walking through the new firearms licencing legislation with one of the interviewers. (Mind you, we did spend the other half doing very low-level technical grilling, so it wasn't quite a walk in the park )

G-Money

Also, don't be surprised if you get asked how to do something via code. Most likely your first response would be to say you'd use some standard feature in Java or .Net to do what they suggest and then be told "you can't use that".

Sometimes I think these people expect you to be programming in the dark ages using paper tape.

I remember one time getting asked how I would do a certain operation on a string. I said "I'd just use string.trim in c# and do..." and the guy goes "you can't use that function".

Of course not. Why would I not use some standard function that's in the framework and is meant for such an operation. :rolleyes:

conor.hogan.2

They are testing your programming/problem solving ability not your ability to know any high level language has a trim method. I would always mention the built in method though as that is obviously what you would actually do in reality outside an interview.

Duggys Housemate

I bet that there is little to be gained from an interview process - at least for non-grads - which couldn't be gained from looking at the experience on the CV and calling a few referees, make sure people have 4-5 references if experienced. If he did work there, if he did so all the work he said he did, if he was generally liked, if he was known to work to schedule and late when needed, hire him, and forget the questions about a binary sort.

Other option - which I have done - ask people to code a project over the weekend, or ask contractors with experience to come in for a days work paid. If the contractor is experienced he should just jump in. See how he interacts, or how he ask questions - the very questions not allowed in an interview - from his colleagues. etc.

I bet that any systematic study of interviews show they dont work.

everdead.ie

So went well I think, no java test.

Discussed work experience, final year project, general Java questions difference between abstract class and an interface, difference between public, private, protected, what is static etc.

How do I test, can I gaurantee no bugs after a test.

why choose C++ over Java? (Speed, flexibility)

Why choose Java or C++? (Garbage collection, Memory Leaks)

can't remember anything else went very fast.

Atomic Pineapple

Sorry to hi jack this thread but I've recently submitted a technical assignment to a company and next stage is an interview where technical questions about the assignment will be asked, has anyone any experience of this and what type of questions may be asked?

Duggys Housemate

draffodx wrote: »

Sorry to hi jack this thread but I've recently submitted a technical assignment to a company and next stage is an interview where technical questions about the assignment will be asked, has anyone any experience of this and what type of questions may be asked?

whats the language?

EDIT: these kinda books are helpful

http://www.amazon.com/Interview-Questions-Youll-Likely-Asked/dp/1453709665/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342606463&sr=1-3&keywords=C%2B%2B+Interview+technical

everdead.ie

draffodx wrote: »

Sorry to hi jack this thread but I've recently submitted a technical assignment to a company and next stage is an interview where technical questions about the assignment will be asked, has anyone any experience of this and what type of questions may be asked?

Technical question would tend to be like why did you do it this way why didn't you use spring, can you name a different method other than equals to compare these two objects etc.

Duggys Housemate

everdead.ie wrote: »

Technical question would tend to be like why did you do it this way why didn't you use spring, can you name a different method other than equals to compare these two objects etc.

Not always, there are often technical tests i.e. look at this C++ and work out th e problems. More rarely there is code to write.

Feathers

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

And those little bastard questions like:
Find if a number is odd without the modulus operator.

Divide it by 2?

G-Money wrote: »

Also, don't be surprised if you get asked how to do something via code. Most likely your first response would be to say you'd use some standard feature in Java or .Net to do what they suggest and then be told "you can't use that".

Sometimes I think these people expect you to be programming in the dark ages using paper tape.

I remember one time getting asked how I would do a certain operation on a string. I said "I'd just use string.trim in c# and do..." and the guy goes "you can't use that function".

Of course not. Why would I not use some standard function that's in the framework and is meant for such an operation. :rolleyes:

So what happens when you get hired & they need you to solve a problem that doesn't have a library for it already?

Someone had to write those standard functions; if you think like a programmer, you should be able to come up with pseudo-code at least to do these things. Especially things like trimming a string! They're not saying how would you write to a file without java.io

everdead.ie

Feathers wrote: »

Divide it by 2?

It's more like divide X by two and put the result into an int(Y) then do an if statement to see if X-Y=Y.
If it is then the number is even if its not then its odd.

Bruscar

Find if a number is odd without the modulus operator.

I think an interview candidate that mentioned bitwise AND would probably get my vote.

Duggys Housemate

everdead.ie wrote: »

Feathers wrote: »

Divide it by 2?

It's more like divide X by two and put the result into an int(Y) then do an if statement to see if X-Y=Y.
If it is then the number is even if its not then its odd.

You can't know what y is.

Feathers

everdead.ie wrote: »

It's more like divide X by two and put the result into an int(Y) then do an if statement to see if X-Y=Y.
If it is then the number is even if its not then its odd.

Yeah, depends on what language you're working in after the div by 2, so didn't flesh it out. Just meant that your 99% of the way there in 2 seconds, not really a difficult programming issue (hopefully).

Duggys Housemate

That's wrong, most languages when dividing by 2 discard the non integer part - its a bitwise shift. Rounding up is an extra operation. You would need to convert to floats then round then test your equivalence. Bad solution.

Feathers

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

That's wrong, most languages when dividing by 2 discard the non integer part - its a bitwise shift. Rounding up is an extra operation. You would need to convert to floats then round then test your equivalence. Bad solution.

So you're telling me that if I say "double d = 5.0/2", most languages will give me 2? Or 3? Hmm…

It's not a bad solution, it's an incomplete solution to an incomplete question. The point is, it's not a difficult problem.

Duggys Housemate

Feathers wrote: »

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

That's wrong, most languages when dividing by 2 discard the non integer part - its a bitwise shift. Rounding up is an extra operation. You would need to convert to floats then round then test your equivalence. Bad solution.

So you're telling me that if I say "double d = 5.0/2", most languages will give me 2? Or 3? Hmm…

It's not a bad solution, it's an incomplete solution to an incomplete question. The point is, it's not a difficult problem.

No he said int. divide an int 13 by 2 and you get 6.

With a double

13 - 6.5 = 6.5
and
12 - 6 = 6

So the logic fails as that always works.

The solution is the bitwise & with 1

nbar12

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
cout << "Hello World!";
return 0;
}

Feathers

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

No he said int. divide an int 13 by 2 and you get 6.

With a double

13 - 6.5 = 6.5
and
12 - 6 = 6

So the logic fails as that always works.

The solution is the bitwise & with 1

The original question said 'number' not integer or double. What everdead.ie was saying is that if you divide a number by two, then cast that to an int and subtract one from the other (X – (int) X, where X = Y/2) you'll get 0 for even numbers, anything else is odd. (Not taking into account negative numbers). He never said that either of 'X' or 'Y' in this case were integers and neither did the poster who put the question.

Duggys Housemate

Feathers wrote: »

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

No he said int. divide an int 13 by 2 and you get 6.

With a double

13 - 6.5 = 6.5
and
12 - 6 = 6

So the logic fails as that always works.

The solution is the bitwise & with 1

The original question said 'number' not integer or double. What everdead.ie was saying is that if you divide a number by two, then cast that to an int and subtract one from the other (X – (int) X, where X = Y/2) you'll get 0 for even numbers, anything else is odd. (Not taking into account negative numbers). He never said that either of 'X' or 'Y' in this case were integers and neither did the poster who put the question.

When we are talking about odd or even we are talking about integers. Anyway try the solution for integers, it's wrong.

Feathers

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

When we are talking about odd or even we are talking about integers. Anyway try the solution for integers, it's wrong.

So from you're understanding:

double d = 2;

You're saying that d above isn't odd or even? A mathematical 'integer' (a number that is whole) is different to a computing int value type. You can store integers (in maths terms) as doubles — and if so, having '.0' at the end doesn't make them magically not even any more.

Of course it's wrong for integers, as it depends on information being lost via a cast to an int – i.e. the 0.5 that you would have after dividing an odd number.

Obviously the most straightforward way to do solve this is using bitwise operation. I don't think anyone has questioned this. The point that was being made was that the original poster was calling it a 'bastard of a question' and that there are ways of working it out that can be simple in execution/understanding, even if you're not up on bitwise operators.

Not sure if you've just realised that you were wrong (that the above does work) and want to cover or that you're being precious about doing things in the right way, but you're coming across as overly defensive to be honest.

Duggys Housemate

Feathers wrote: »

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

When we are talking about odd or even we are talking about integers. Anyway try the solution for integers, it's wrong.

So from you're understanding:

double d = 2;

You're saying that d above isn't odd or even? A mathematical 'integer' (a number that is whole) is different to a computing int value type. You can store integers (in maths terms) as doubles — and if so, having '.0' at the end doesn't make them magically not even any more.

Of course it's wrong for integers, as it depends on information being lost via a cast to an int – i.e. the 0.5 that you would have after dividing an odd number.

Obviously the most straightforward way to do solve this is using bitwise operation. I don't think anyone has questioned this. The point that was being made was that the original poster was calling it a 'bastard of a question' and that there are ways of working it out that can be simple in execution/understanding, even if you're not up on bitwise operators.

Not sure if you've just realised that you were wrong (that the above does work) and want to cover or that you're being precious about doing things in the right way, but you're coming across as overly defensive to be honest.

Not being precious. The interviewer is looking for the proper solution. Writing a function or API is not just about getting some solution but the best. The interviewer is looking for the correct. If you use a double he will ask you why you are using a double when integers would suffice. In fact you would write a function and probably given a header to implement.

I.e

Boolean isEven(int number)

If you were to flaff around with floats it would be a fail. The question is asked to work out if you understand bitwise operators. It's not a test to see how much more inefficient you can be than using the real solution.

Storing ints as doubles is wrong.

So.

double i;

for(i=0; i<kMax;i++) is nearly always wrong unless you were using i as a float within the scope and not an enumerator. That kind of coding indicates lack of understanding of core concepts.

Feathers

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

Not being precious. The interviewer is looking for the proper solution. Writing a function or API is not just about getting some solution but the best. The interviewer is looking for the correct. If you use a double he will ask you why you are using a double when integers would suffice. In fact you would write a function and probably given a header to implement.

I.e

Boolean isEven(int number)

If you were to flaff around with floats it would be a fail. The question is asked to work out if you understand bitwise operators. It's not a test to see how much more inefficient you can be than using the real solution.

Storing ints as doubles is wrong.

So.

double i;

for(i=0; i<kMax;i++) is nearly always wrong unless you were using i as a float within the scope and not an enumerator. That kind of coding indicates lack of understanding of core concepts.

If the interviewer asked me why I was flaffing around with floats, I'd politely ask him to reread the question he set me, which was to check if a number was odd or even, not if an int was odd or even. Storing ints as doubles is only wrong if you're certain that you will only be dealing with ints, which you're not in this case - that's just your assumption on the question.

If the interviewer wanted the correct answer, he wouldn't have said 'without using modulo', since this is the "correct" answer that would be used in production code.

Rather the question is qualitative rather than quantitative: he wants to know how you're thinking about the problem. If I said I'd chose to do this via a parseInt method if it were JavaScript for instance (as most JS developers I've dealt with don't come from a computer science background, don't have a good grasp of bitwise operation and therefore the savings made from slightly more efficient code would be lost in maintenance and bug fixes), I'd consider that a good answer.

In hypothetical questions, I'd be much more interested in why someone is giving me an answer than the answer itself. It's not a case of pass or fail!