Technical interviews

[wonderboy]

Had an interview yesterday with a massive IBank. Was shocked at the quality of the interview. Focussed on very specific ancillary technologies that can be rapidly learned as opposed to the core principles of the technology being recruited for.

To top it all off, during part of the grilling on said core technology the nominated "senior technical guy" betrayed a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of how object references are passed around (something you learn in chapter one of any book on said development language, and that is common across Java, C# and JavaScript).

Now it might have been an elaborate ruse of misdirection (I politely corrected him), but I suspect he simply did not understand the technology he was working with.

Yes, I'm biased because they decided not to make an offer (full disclosure), but this interview was truly a shocker.

 

[MyUserName]

I had a technical phone interview with a bank. The interviewer asked what happened in 'new'; I talked about it. He asked what happened in 'alloc'; I explained that I had never dug that far but I explained how I thought it might work. He asked how memory allocations were handled when they were against a process memory partition (or something); I explained that I had never needed to look at that but explained how I thought it might work. He seemed unsatisfied that I did not know about this level of programming.

He failed me for being unable to answer basic C++ questions. The questions were not really relevant to the work at the bank (a trade capture system, I have worked on three different ones and never needed to go that deep) but he only recently joined the bank and used to work on compilers. I thought it was quite a poor interview but my opinion on that did not sway things!

 

[vetran]

honestly do you want to work for such people?

 

[eek]

honestly do you want to work for such people?

No.... but a failed interview is always annoying even when its got nothing to do with you.

 

[MyUserName]

honestly do you want to work for such people?

Not generally but at the time I was about to be out of work with a pregnant wife so I would have bitten the bullet and stayed there at least for a couple of years.

 

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Had an interview yesterday with a massive IBank. Was shocked at the quality of the interview. Focussed on very specific ancillary technologies that can be rapidly learned as opposed to the core principles of the technology being recruited for.

To top it all off, during part of the grilling on said core technology the nominated "senior technical guy" betrayed a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of how object references are passed around (something you learn in chapter one of any book on said development language, and that is common across Java, C# and JavaScript).

Now it might have been an elaborate ruse of misdirection (I politely corrected him), but I suspect he simply did not understand the technology he was working with.

Yes, I'm biased because they decided not to make an offer (full disclosure), but this interview was truly a shocker.

Got interviewed by the most arrogant Bob I have ever met at U*S in London. He was asking me such detailed technical questions I was like yes that is an interesting new concept but does not mean I have to have implemented it - having said that I wouldn't have a problem as I have done things 1000s of different ways over the last 10 years....

I was happy I never got the gig.

 

[wonderboy]

Got interviewed by the most arrogant Bob I have ever met at U*S in London.

I am happy for other people to have misunderstandings/gaps in knowledge (we all have them), but in my case it was the exaggerated self-opinion of my interviewers (and there were four) that made the poor standard of questioning difficult to take.

 

[psychocandy]

Hate technical interviews. Always get permie who seem to think they're system is the most complicated in the world and they've got to catch you out with the most obscure question they can think of.

The Bobs are a complete nightmare for this. Had one once with 4-5 of them on the phone - all trying to outdo each other.

With 20 years experience, I might not have done every single thing but I've done a fair few things. But you can pretty much guarantee I can pick it up as I've done before. So I find it a bit patronising to be honest. Fair enough ask me what I did at cient XYZ but please dont ask me to name an obscure command that I can google in 3 secs anyway.

Best interview I ever had was from a yank whos first comment was I wont ask you anything technical and assume I'm superior to you because based on your CV you've been around a fair time.

 

[TestMangler]

Hate technical interviews. Always get permie who seem to think they're system is the most complicated in the world and they've got to catch you out with the most obscure question they can think of.

The Bobs are a complete nightmare for this. Had one once with 4-5 of them on the phone - all trying to outdo each other.

With 20 years experience, I might not have done every single thing but I've done a fair few things. But you can pretty much guarantee I can pick it up as I've done before. So I find it a bit patronising to be honest. Fair enough ask me what I did at cient XYZ but please dont ask me to name an obscure command that I can google in 3 secs anyway.

Best interview I ever had was from a yank whos first comment was I wont ask you anything technical and assume I'm superior to you because based on your CV you've been around a fair time.

Just as well he didn't ask you how to deal with a difficult neighbour or if commuting daily was better than staying away

 

[psychocandy]

Just as well he didn't ask you how to deal with a difficult neighbour or if commuting daily was better than staying away

Deffo. would have been screwed.

Even worse if they'd ask what hand to use to have a wass. (Both BTW).