Re:I was asked to crack a program in a job interview
by davidgerard on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @05:40PM
(#8332521)
Certainly, as user:psychometry pointed out also.
In this case, as a sysadmin I was pleased to be able to show my chops in a realistic test. And our previous hire was also quite pleased to get a real test. But of course, there is potential to abuse it.
As an interviewer I've done something like this when needing to hire for a very straightforward job with very little time and an effectively endless supply of candidates.
This addressed the problem of our time crunch, but I doubt it helped the selection process overall.
I think this sort of testing is subject to all the same issues as most any other method of interviewing, but limited to a much smaller sample size.
Basically, it's arguably good for the interviewers and a coin flip for everyone else.
As an interviewee, I haven't encountered a test like this, but I expect my response would almost surely involve questioning the architecture decisions that led to such a problem in the first place.