Technical interview

In my opinion, its okay to give a written test as long as the questions are relevant. Its good for the applicant too because he/she is given a chance to show off what they can do.

BennyW

One place I interviewed set me two challenges, one was a design challenge and one was an implementation & design challenge :)

They gave me two days to do each one, and to email in my solutions. The first was just a UML diagram of a system which I think I did pretty well, and the second was just a small application that tied into a MySQL DB. (This was not a game programming job incidentally)

I really liked this method, as it gave me an opportunity to spend a little extra time and send something in that was a little above and beyond what they wanted. Although I effectively lost a few days of my life hammering these out (through choice really) I thought it was a really good method.

Phone interviews are okay, but I tend to freeze up on them a little bit and sometimes forget stuff that I do understand. I remember blanking a question that was actually really simple, and I still feel really embarassed about this now!

I've only actually ever had two interviews in my life for software development, which were using the two techniques above. I preferred the first one, I think :]

For a lower-experience position, asking for a short programming session isn't bad.

Give the framework and have the candidate fill in the necessary blanks, and a fun little problem. Maybe something simple and fun like a self-shadowing heightmap, or drawing multiple moving sprites on an image, or even writing a 4-way and 8-way flood fill both with and without recursion. I expect that any of these three can be done between 30-90 minutes.

In each case, you give them a framework that does the work, and call it every frame. Your parameters for each would be the buffer to fill, mouse coordinates, and then depending on the problem: the heightmap, sprites and a map structure, or an image to fill.

These three are also nice because there are several optimizations that can be done with them. The self-shadowing could range from a single pass to N^3 passes, sprite drawing can show off pointer arithmetic, and different fill algorithms can show off the choice between space, time, and recursive complexity.

And they might surprise you. Someone seeming a bit overqualified could take surprisingly long on the self shadowing, then when you come in a bit disappointed with the time, they show you how they have added anti-aliasing and terrain smoothing to make it look nicer. [looksaround]

Quote:

Original post by Tesl They gave me two days to do each one

That only works for some entry level positions.

Somebody with even a modicum of programming experience won't want to -- and shouldn't have to -- dedicate four days to your company without getting something significant in return.

Quote:

Original post by frob Quote: Original post by Tesl They gave me two days to do each one That only works for some entry level positions. Somebody with even a modicum of programming experience won't want to -- and shouldn't have to -- dedicate four days to your company without getting something significant in return.

True, however I should probably point out that no-one would have needed 4 days to complete these tasks. The design challenge took me maybe a couple of hours max, and the second took quite a bit longer because I tried to be too clever :P

Our company requires a programmer test from each and every programmer who applies, regardless of their experience. It's not a series of questions; it's a problem that has to be solved and the source code sent for evaluation. Everyone gets as long as they want - the newbies obviously take a lot longer than the experienced ones. It is often a surprise to see who comes up with what kind of results - often the old dogs' solutions run slower than the newbies. Of course the test results are only part of the interview process. The test helps us weed out bad programmers and also provides a point of discussion about what is acceptable in our company.

I like the tests from an employer perspective, but I think I would not like them from the potential employee perspective. Of course I'm not looking for a job right now - if I were I would do whatever I need to in order to get the job. Additionally, I think I would like showing off my smarts before the interview even begins with a code tests, but maybe I am over confident in my skills.

I have showed this link before and I will show it again, because it contains lots of useful information :
http://www.housemarque.com/Programmerfaq.htm

When I was hired, I didn't need to do any coding, etc. They just asked me things like : "how would you do this?" "what is the biggest / coolest project you have worked on?" "what are you going to do in the future?", and some talk about graphics programming. :)