Yeah, bottom line, if you don't know an answer, then "I don't know" is always the right answer and the (ironically) most impressive answer. Plus you can always do things to mitigate, like talk about related or adjacent concepts a bit, state how you're willing to learn, maybe even take a guess at it. But if you bullshit you're either going to get caught, or, almost worse, get the job and feel like a fraud for months.
Always be hired or not hired for who you actually are!
that's why i like live coding. i had candidates who were dumbfounded with something like elevatorsaga.com.
Imagine he got the role and did well. Trying to find the perfect person doesn't always work out as expected.
Re:Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)
by redbluegreen on Saturday May 18, 2019 @08:17AM
(#19946994)
Yeah, but lying to that extent is a huge red flag, not just saying your Spanish is "mediocre" instead of "beginner".
As an anecdote, I used to work for a company and would require candidates to know some Ruby, for one guy with several years experience in Python we changed the requirements of the home assignment so he could write it using whatever he wanted. he hands over a nodeJS application claiming he took the opportunity to learn something new(why not Ruby?), seemed like it was well done, so we bring him in for an interview, unlucky for him, there was one member in our team with some nodeJS experience(me), having reviewed the code, I asked him to do a minor feature addition to his own code, he froze, couldn't do it because he didn't write the code(copying from some repo) and didn't know any nodeJS at all, asked him to do it in Python instead and he still couldn't do it, he had just spiced up his resumé with tech we didn't use to see if he could weasel his way in.