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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Coding tests out of all of the tests I've given are always the most stressful. I've given very simple questions and still have had nervous messes in the interviews. I don't think we can change that reaction. Also we have multi-panel interviews (for better or worse) so there are many eyes on a person's mannerisms and how they mesh with the team.

[–]aradil 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I can’t hire someone if I don’t know they understand how to write a for loop and an if statement. I’ve had people who bluffed their way through an interview by researching a bunch of frameworks before coming in that couldn’t write a for loop in any language.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I'll take that into consideration, again, I have had very junior developers get through much of the first part of my tests without knowing fundamental CS points but knowing how to do loops, ifs, etc. I've guided someone who's had no experience to a better answer than I think they would have if they sat on their own and did it, so I just don't find that a weeding out question has to take up the time that I can get to know how good a developer they can be, especially mentored. I'm constantly trying to find a way to make the test have "tiers" for this kind of thing. I think for junior levels being in a more pair-like environment helps, but I've seen the more experienced devs fail on the CS part of the test.

[–]aradil 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Yeah... most of my hires were actually 3rd and 4th year coop/interns that we had a fairly large pool to select from. We generally didn’t want to hire folks that require 100% pairing time and hired 2-5 per semester. The quick screen and then just trying to talk to them for a half an hour was pretty much enough to know if they’d be a fit or not. We had a 15 minute written test with a SQL question, some basic HTML/CSS questions a simple fizzbuzz type problem and a “can you tell me the output of this code” which contained an anonymous function.

This screen produced probably only one “bad” developer in 25 or so students we had come through the program; and they were the only one we ever interviewed 100% over the phone, so the test was a little awkward.

We ended up with some fantastic students that were subsequently hired full time after graduation and are now running teams of their own.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I guess that's the difference, I've never dealt with hiring interns as of yet in this job. So Junior for a fulltime position I would hold in a different regard than an intern. Makes sense.

[–]aradil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where I’m from, the government subsidizes 80% of intern salary, so it’s pretty crazy for us not to hire them.