[seanmcdirmid]

Most of these interview tests are game-able, there are a few resources you need to study hard for and you’ll be able to pass the interview questions without many problems. This has the perverse effect of raising the bar since everyone is doing so great on the problems and filtering is needed! But in the end, you only select for who is better at studying for the interview, not who is a better developer. Fun stuff.

If you onboarded in a time before this, or you aren’t practicing for an interview, it is very likely you wouldn’t just pass the interview, like you wouldn’t likely pass a physics college exam right now even though you did when you were in school.

[gwbas1c]

I've found that it's usually obvious when someone is gaming my interview. Their answers are too correct, and too smoothly given. Those candidates are very quickly rejected and the recruiting agency basically told to scram.

[RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u]

Perhaps, but here's a personal anecdote when I was interviewed years ago. The interviewer asked me one of the trick problems popular at the time, which I knew the answer to. Ironically, it was not a problem I'd studied for; I just happened to have seen in elsewhere years prior, found it interesting, so I remembered it and its solution. To be clear, I didn't solve the problem the first time I'd seen it, either.

Nevertheless, I gave the interviewer a detailed, step-by-step, golden answer she was looking for, and she's obliviously impressed. After a few minutes, however, youthful stupidity^W^Wmy integrity got the better of me and I told her that I'd seen the problem before. So I got a 2nd trick problem, one that I didn't know nor studied for, and naturally didn't arrive at the golden solution.

I didn't get called back.

If you were to ask me to solve a problem that's on my study list today, believe me that I've got the selling part down pat now.

[seanmcdirmid]

If I study a bunch of interviewing problems really hard, I’m bound to do good on your test. I can study hard, I proved that in unveristy and grad school. Your interview process probably isn’t that unique, and for bigger companies like Google there is plenty of study material out there.

And everyone is doing this now, it just isn’t a certain few bad recruiting agencies and applicants. Heck, even the good applicants (the ones that you want to hire anyways) have to do it to get through the loop.

[gspetr]

It's almost as if the people who want the job the most would study for it the hardest.