Interview question's answer relevance

views:

431

answers:

+6 Q:

Interview question's answer relevance

I recently conducted a technical interview in which I cleared the candidate but in the second round (someone else conducted this part) he was disqualified. I had very good vibes about this person and I was surprised of him not getting selected. Out of curiosity I went digging around and found out that he didn't answer the question in an expected answer.

Q:How do you implement a Site's hit counter?

Ans (given by candidate): Use Site analytics google/omniture

Ans (expected response): Use application scoped objects to store and retrieve the hits per request and store that in persistent storage

Now what are your opinions on this?

+5 A:

Pretty simple really. They were asked a question that had more than one way to answer. The questioner obviously didn't think this through and thus the interviewer failed, not the interviewee.

Preet Sangha 2009-09-07 06:06:16

+1 A:

I would vote for the second approach. If you can do your task not depending on any other 3 rd party tool then better go for it.

Anyway each interviewer has his mind set for some answers and he accepts only answers that are related to this. I don't think he was out of the interview only because of this answer. Probably there might be other reasons also.

rahul 2009-09-07 06:06:35

So you like reinventing wheels? How's your compiler and operating system coming on? Seriously, is implementing a hit counter yourself likely to add any business value above the 3rd party solutions? If not, why is it worth wasting time on it?

Jon Skeet 2009-09-07 06:12:54

Is implementing a hit counter such a huge task?

rahul 2009-09-07 06:14:58

Most of the sites show a numeric value about the hit and not a detailed report? For this is it necessary to use a software like google analytics?

rahul 2009-09-07 06:16:56

All engineers are expected to understand "how stuff's work", and we would be better users of the technology or API, if we understand how the things really work ...

Alphaneo 2009-09-07 06:27:54

When waiting for sites to load I constantly see "Waiting for google-analytics.com..." etc, and sometimes that takes up more than half of the load time (and yes, on various connections and browsers). If all you need a simple numerical hit counter, then just code it. It'd take maybe a dozen or two lines of code...

2009-09-07 07:33:19

@pheonix - implementing google analytics or writing your own simple incrementer both take near zero time. One way gives you vast amounts of reliable information, the other gives you a crude incrementer. The smarter question is: is it necessary to roll your own?

annakata 2009-09-07 08:01:57

I think the problem is that interviewer did not asked about how to do it without that service. i think we can all understand him, why hire someone who knows more than you? interviewer is too busy to read stuff about programming, so knowing stuff is not good.

01 2009-09-07 08:07:48

+1 A:

Maybe the guy who took the second round got irritated by the mention of name "google" :)..... Just kidding.

I feel that both can be treated as a good response. But the second explains more of "how" rather than just saying use some tool!

Aviator 2009-09-07 06:07:35

+2 A:

Could be 2 instances - maybe the interviewer wanted to know the individual's programming approach to solve the issue. Although then, he could have clarified the question to the individual.

Second, maybe interviewer himself didn't know much about the subject.

Dhana 2009-09-07 06:09:26

+1 the latter I'd say.

Preet Sangha 2009-09-07 06:10:38

.. or he was old school programmer that would never use code that hes not written. i think people using framework piss him off and thats why the job interview failed.

01 2009-09-07 07:46:58

+6 A:

To be frank, this is not the kind of question on which i decide to reject a candidate.Infact i would have selected this person for his out of the box thinking. He didnt follow the herd mentality. Good for him that he didnt get the job. He can always try his luck at some place where his new approach is appreciated. One thing is for sure, the interviewer is a veteran and who is not up-to-date with the latest stuff and the interviewee is a college fresher/ less than 2 yrs exp who keeps tab on whats happening around ?

Cshah 2009-09-07 06:10:33

good points +1

annakata 2009-09-07 08:03:04

so the older you are the less you care?

01 2009-09-07 08:11:09

the older you are. the less you care about accepting new :)

Cshah 2009-09-07 12:37:43

+3 A:

I can't believe that's the only reason they didn't hire the guy... There are other possibilities, such as:

He wasn't impressive on the personal level
Other candidates were just better

Once you decide not to hire someone, it's easy to "blame it on an answer" in order not to get into personal deficiencies...

Roee Adler 2009-09-07 06:10:54

i think if other candidates were better than this whole topic would not exist. but he might just not like him, maybe the interviewee was fat or did not like football.

01 2009-09-07 08:10:13

+8 A:

Well, from what you describe, I'm guessing that the interview was probably supposed to assess the candidates technical skills. If you are asked to implement a hit counter in a technical interview, they are probably looking for a description of how you would build a hit counter.

While using Google's analytics shows that you are familiar with hit counters, and perhaps that you're smart enough to not build your own when there are perfectly good ones out there, it doesn't show anything about technical ability or that you understand how they are built.

zombat 2009-09-07 06:11:38

Thats what i tried to tell :). Well put!. +1

Aviator 2009-09-07 06:12:47

"it doesn't show anything about technical ability or that you understand how they are built" - maybe it shows that you know enough about them that you know to just use google analytics.

annakata 2009-09-07 06:13:43

@annakata - yes, but who would you rather hire? Someone who just knows how to install a third-party product, or someone that understands how that product is built and could build something similar?

zombat 2009-09-07 06:34:24

A hit counter, lets face it, isn't the best question to an interview .. who in this world can't build one? I bet this tought crossed through interviewee's mind.

yoda 2009-09-07 07:06:23

@zombat - honestly I'd rather hire the guy who would use google analytics than the guy who thinks that's a wrong answer and would build it from scratch. I really would.

annakata 2009-09-07 07:58:59

@zombat - you wouldn't build one unless you specially needed to. In this case the interviewer should have made it clear as to the reasons why. If not - is the guy supposed to mind read?

Preet Sangha 2009-09-07 08:24:17

I didn't say that he *should* build one, or would be *required to build one*. It's a **technical exercise**. It's just a test to see if you have the technical skills to perform the task. It's like asking if you can write Quick Sort, or your own log file parser, or your own MVC framework. These are things you'll likely never be required to do in a job, because tools already exist. But if I answered the question "Describe how you would implement an MVC framework" with "Install Zend", I am *not going to get hired*. A technical interview is for showing your technical skills.

zombat 2009-09-07 16:35:18

@annakata - How does "install google analytics" show that the guy is a great programmer? It shows nothing about his technical ability at all, since it takes zero technical knowledge to do that. You don't want to hire someone who has shown you nothing about their programming skills. Building a counter from scratch is the wrong answer in the day-to-day workplace, but it's the right answer on a technical exam.

zombat 2009-09-07 16:38:55

+3 A:

The interviewer had a mindless, fixed opinion on this which neither suits an interview nor - more importantly - real life programming. If he was of any use whatsoever as an interviewer he should have said something like "alright, and how would youdo it if you wanted to do this from scratch?" or "Aliright, give me another way".

It is not the task of the interviewer to try and get the candidate to fail - I'd tryan get the candidate back if you can and have a long talk with your interviewer.

(Also: two technical interviews?)

annakata 2009-09-07 06:12:36

It isn't stated in the question, but maybe a phone screen? Companies interviewing out of state candidates will routinely give 2 phone screens to ensure that the candidate has a good chance of doing well on the in person.

Justin Rudd 2009-09-07 06:24:37

The first was a telephonic one...I took that...the other was face to face.

2009-09-08 10:25:34

The interviewer wanted a technical answer, and the interviewee came up with a smart (non-technical) answer.

In general, if someone asks you in an interview to write a program in C to compare a couple of strings ... though you have all freedom to use strcmp , it is mostly expected to write the comparison logic by yourselves.

The interviewer knows that you are not going to write those silly string comparisons in the future, but would like you to know what is happening underneath ...

It's just not re-inventing the wheel, but understanding how the wheel works, and if you understand, someday, you might improve it ...

Alphaneo 2009-09-07 06:25:55

If you look at the wording of the question, it's not necessarily clear that the interviewer wanted a technical answer. If the question was how do you *create* a hit counter instead of *implement*, then yes the interviewer should expect a technical answer.

jimyi 2009-09-07 06:30:05

@jimyi - maybe, but bear in mind that it is after all a job interview. They're looking for skills and competency. Ideally, the interviewee could have combined the two answers above. "You'd create... and store... like so. Another option is to use Google Analytics." Then again, I'm saying this in hindsight...

2009-09-07 07:38:23

If someone gives you the "use tool x to do it" answer, and you were expecting an implementation, how hard is it to say "do it without using tool x or similar". It's a failure of the interviewer to not follow up rather than a failure of the interviewee. The interviewer hasn't determined if the interviewee can actually do the task.

patros 2009-09-08 18:03:43

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

Interview question's answer relevance

related questions