Need to hire someone

[doodab]

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/riccardo...ransformer.pdf

Do you allow your interviewees to google? I think ability to google is #1 skill given that you're unlikely to be an expert in everything you need to ever know.

Nope. It's a high level interview question, designed to avoid the sort of deep technical details that googling for would be expected to be necessary.

[d000hg]

I think its more a look at me aren't I clever question to which my response would be see ya don't want to work anywhere near ya.

Are you nervous about being asked to show you have the skills?

Nope. It's a high level interview question, designed to avoid the sort of deep technical details that googling for would be expected to be necessary.

Oh in that case, I'd hire a Bob and keep 70% of the money.

[doodab]

What is the size of the tree, what are the time/memory constraints?

If it is small, recursively traverse it. If the nodes are typed then you'll probably want to use polymorphism to decide how to process the node. You can build the other tree as you go.

If it is large, avoid the recursion and manually keep track of how you go.

Another question: does how you traverse the tree matter?

You probably have in mind the visitor pattern for processing the nodes, but this pattern might over-complicate things.

If I wanted to crowbar a pattern into this example, if you needed to perform multiple processing steps per node, I might use the chain of responsibility pattern.

For a telephone interview question this is tough. Based on the core skills you mention, I find it very unlikely such a question would correspond to anything the candidate would need to do on the job (I hazard a guess that the "tree" is an XML document - if so there will be a library to help with this).

Good answer. Although the input does in fact start life as XML, you need to make a round trip to another system via a Java API that you don't control in order to derive the output that corresponds to the input.

I think this question would eliminate a lot of good developers from your selection process.

Quite possibly. Better that than hiring the wrong ones.

[eek]

Are you nervous about being asked to show you have the skills?

Oh in that case, I'd hire a Bob and keep 70% of the money.

No I just find no it alls don't listen and end up creating crap

[doodab]

Oh in that case, I'd hire a Bob and keep 70% of the money.

We have me, another guy, and some cheap labour, which has actually proven helpful on a lot of ancillary tasks and the more formulaic "use of existing framework" stuff but we have a few "hard" problems where we need someone with a bit more je ne sais quoi. Or another couple of months between now and October.

[d000hg]

No I just find no it alls don't listen and end up creating crap

If you assume asking a question is the sign of a know-it-all you must hate interviews

[doodab]

How enterprisey would you like it And how big are the trees?

The trees aren't very big. Maybe 50-200 leaves.

[doodab]

No I just find no it alls don't listen and end up creating crap

What sort of question would you ask?

[vetran]

You're for the chop then.

Maybe he needs to branch out, its a Knotty problem but some young sapling will solve it then put down roots.

But remember his bark is worse than his bite, if someone solves it you will have to bough to his knowledge.

I must admit I was thinking an XSLT transform from the vague description, I must admit I would have asked for an example.

[kingcook]

I need to hire someone. I need a good dev with some commodity skills, and the agency I came through (+ the others I tend to deal with when I'm looking) are a bit niche so they don't really have anyone suitable and keep sending us all sorts of jokers and chancers, of which we already have quite enough thank you very much.

What is the best way to go about locating the right person?

Give me a phonings, I will complete the project to completion. I have leant most of my learnings from here:

Cowboy coding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I can do the needful.