The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing by Joel Spolsky stresses the need to hire programmers who are A) smart, and B) get things done. Joel de-emphasises the value of brainteaser questions, explaining if you have heard the answer before you are at a massive advantage - true!
Some thougths from Joel:
"When interviewing experienced candidates, you can talk about their most recent assignment from their previous job"
Here's another really interesting observation from Joel:
"Often CS majors will just assume that everyone knows what Bates Theorem is or what O(log n) means. If they start doing this, stop them for a minute and say, “could you do me a favor, just for the sake of the exercise, could you please explain this in terms my grandmother could understand.” At this point many people will still continue to use jargon and will completely fail to make themselves understood. Gong! You don’t want to hire them, basically, because they are not smart enough to comprehend what it takes to make other people understand their ideas."
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