Thank you so much for sharing this. Look at it this way, many companies are missing great talent because of their interviewing practices and for trying to imitate Google or Microsoft. More innovative companies (think Moneyball) can take advantage of this pool of talent and target people like you. I'm trying to think how to make it easier to identify this talent. Any ideas?
honestcoyote|11 years ago
Sure, some, if not most, of the candidates will use Google, Stack Overflow, their old college textbooks, or whatever will help. But they're going to do that on the job too, like most of us do. The key would be to get them to explain, in detail, how they solved the problem and why they choose their particular solution, going line by line in the code if needed.
I think this is perfect because it doesn't put the candidate on the spot. The shyest person should be able to work on their own, and I've never met a programmer so introverted that they couldn't explain the work they've already completed. The people who just faked the exercise by copy-pasting should be readily apparent once the detailed questions about their code arise.
This is probably an overly simplistic answer but I think it would make a huge difference. In the job description, make it clear this will be your interviewing style and you'll attract quite a few of the shy-but-qualified people who would probably skip Google or any of the other high-pressure interviewing companies.