Algorithms in interviews




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Those questions test your learning and problem solving skills. Anyone with an Undergrad CS background should have no trouble reasoning through those.

Good interviewers *NEVER* expect a fixed solution (unless fizbuzz or something).

They see how the candidates attack the problem, consider scenarios, refine solutions when faced with feedback (self/from interviewer).

Besides, what does interviewing for the job even mean? At-least in big companies like Google people move around projects etc. Does that mean they need to be re-interviewed?

Interviews are designed to test your learning and problem solving ability (along with attitude, culture fit, maturity etc): the core stuff (the rest like proficiency in jquery etc is fluff that easily learned on the job by a candidate who excels in the core skills).

Algorithm questions help in gauging learning/problem solving ability and since some familiarity is expected from each candidate, this is a reasonable approach to interviewing. Of course, a caveat is that they should avoid picking questions from sites like these :-)

- Anonymous July 24, 2014 | Flag Reply
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@Anonymous, those may apply to good interviewer. but we dont know what the interviewer is actually expecting.

- a July 25, 2014 | Flag Reply
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What is your point, a? A bad interviewer can mess up any kind of interview, whether it be algorithms, or "applicable to the job" questions.

If you get a bad interviewer, it is your bad luck.

That has got nothing to do with the type of interview.

- Anonymous July 25, 2014 | Flag




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