Recently I heard a really interesting interview question that was used at a technical company. I don’t know the answer, but as I’ll explain shortly, that’s not the point. The question goes like this. Suppose you have N lines of code (say 1,000,000 or so). Each line of code may be good with some probability p (say 0.95) or may (more…)
Add comment February 20th, 2010
A fairly common job interview question for technical positions at companies like Microsoft and Google is to design and code a hash table. This is a standard homework problem in almost any data structures and algorithms class that computer science majors take and so (more…)
Add comment January 3rd, 2010
One of the most common non-technical questions you are likely to get when interviewing for a technical position at companies like Microsoft is, “What are your strengths?” As with other soft questions, you need to be ready with a good answer because a weak answer could kill your chances of getting a job offer even if you have strong technical skills. Now your answer will be different from everyone else’s answer but there are a few guidelines you can follow. First of all, quickly zero-in on (more…)
Add comment December 20th, 2009
Overall, based on my experience observing hundreds of job interviews for technical positions (developer, tester, program manager, etc.) at companies like Microsoft and Google, I’d guess that the most common category of interview questions are those that involve data structures and algorithms. An example of such a question might run along the lines of, “How would you find the 10 largest values from (more…)
Add comment December 14th, 2009
Over the past 24 months or so I’ve noticed what seems to be a trend in hiring at technical companies like Microsoft and Google. It appears that jobs are becoming more specialized and that this is leading to sort of a two-tiered work force where employees are either on the relatively high-skill end (such as specialized systems developers) or on the relatively low-skill end (such as purely manual testers). Anyway, one effect is that interview questions are becoming increasingly technical in order to categorize potential employees. Recently I observed an interview. One of the questions ran along the lines of, “Suppose you have a collection of horizontal and (more…)
Add comment December 6th, 2009
Many technical interviews at companies like Microsoft and Google involve data structures. One such category of questions runs along the lines of, “Explain to me what a height-balanced tree is.” This question is usually looking to determine if you understand one of the key principles of a binary search tree, namely, that the order in which data is inserted into a binary search tree determines the shape of the tree, which in turn determines how fast the tree can be searched. So, there are several types of tree data structures which are designed to be balanced. The three types of trees you should know about are AVL trees, (more…)
Add comment November 27th, 2009
Hi, my name is Giovan Richardson and I’m a technical recruiter for Volt in Redmond, WA. Click on the run arrow below to hear me describe a SDET 2 position. You can reach me at redmondjobs@volt.com. (more…)
Add comment November 23rd, 2009
Here’s an interesting interview question I heard recently. “If you have a binary search tree in memory, how can you can save its data to a file, and then later restore the tree to its original configuration?” Like many interview questions, you need to first (more…)
Add comment November 22nd, 2009
Hi, my name is Deena Saad and I’m a technical recruiter for Volt in Redmond, WA. Click on the run arrow below to hear about a Software Design Engineer 2 position. You can contact me at redmondjobs@volt.com. (more…)
Add comment November 16th, 2009
In a technical interview, you are likely to get questions which are meant to determine your knowledge of Object Oriented Programming. One common question is some variation on, “In C++, explain what virtual methods, virtual destructors, and virtual constructors are.” In general a good approach is to give a verbal, summary answer first, and then (more…)
Add comment November 13th, 2009
