A very common interview questions at technology companies like Microsoft and Google is, “Write a function which reverse a string.” It’s a very simple question but because there are so many different solutions, the hiring manager can tell a lot about a job candidate by exactly how the candidate answers the question. Reversing a string depends to a large extent on (more…)
Add comment July 24th, 2010
I was chatting with one of my buddies who has been working at Microsoft for nearly 10 years as a software developer. We both started at Microsoft in the same week and worked on Internet Explorer version 3. Here’s an interview question he has used for years: “Write a function which prints a list of the longest (more…)
Add comment July 8th, 2010
A engineer I used to work asked me my thoughts about an interview question he received recently. The question was essentially, “How would you model a pinball machine as a program?” This is a classic object oriented programming (OOP) design question. As with any design question, there are an unlimited number of approaches. Let’s imagine that you further qualify the question and determine that you want to (more…)
Add comment June 19th, 2010
In a recent blog entry I described how coming across as being needy is the number one kiss of death in a technical job interview at a company like Microsoft. But there are several other all-too-common big mistakes you can make in an interview. Another interview kiss of death is to either be too (more…)
Add comment June 5th, 2010
I didn’t realize how important body language is in an interview until an interesting incident recently. A Volt recruiter contacted me and asked me to meet with a candidate, “Joe”, who had been turned down for eight jobs in a row even though he had very solid technical skills. So, I set up a short meeting with Joe. When Joe arrived at my office I immediately knew something was wrong. (more…)
Add comment May 24th, 2010
I observe a lot of job interviews at Microsoft and other technical companies. All too often I see technically qualified candidates do poorly in an interview. Sometimes very, very poorly. There are a handful of “Interview Kisses of Death” — things that if you do them in an interview, almost guarantee that you will not get a job offer. And these kisses of death are surprisingly common. The number one kiss of death in an interview is (more…)
Add comment May 15th, 2010
Many of the jobs (developer, tester, manager, tech writer, support, and so on) at technical companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon require at least a basic knowledge of SQL joins. So, it’d be natural to assume that interview questions about joins are common. And they are up to a point. The trouble is that (more…)
Add comment April 24th, 2010
I heard an interesting interview question at Microsoft this week. The hiring manager asked the candidate, “What is the difference between the stack and the heap?” Like many interview questions, this particular question is either ambiguous on purpose (so the hiring manager can (more…)
Add comment April 19th, 2010
The vast majority of technical positions at companies like Microsoft (developer, tester, program manager, technical writer, support engineer, etc.) require at least a basic familiarity with SQL. So, if you are interviewing for a job you are quite likely to get a few questions about SQL. After questions about JOINS, one of the most common SQL question topics runs along the lines of, “Tell me about SQL logins and users.” Like most interview questions, a good approach for you is to use the “newspaper style” by (more…)
Add comment April 8th, 2010
A very common interview question at technical companies like Microsoft and Google is some variation of, “How would you remove duplicates from a list?” The first step when answering this, or any other, question is to qualify it to make sure (more…)
Add comment March 20th, 2010
