[EliRivers]

That makes no sense to me. I know exactly what skills my company needs (or rather, what the hiring people look for on the CV). I know exactly what the interview is looking for. I know exactly what programming language to brush up on, and I know the complete set of coding problems set in the interview.

I know it so well that the last person I recommended (for the recruitment bounty) breezed through after I tipped her off on the coding questions. I could get through the whole process easily. I doubt I'm the only person.

What kind of people set questions in interviews without knowing what answer they're hoping for? How do they know if the candidate is any good if they don't know the answer themselves? That sounds.... well, it sounds insane.

[why-el]

I think you are missing the point. The challenge is to design a set of hurdles that are equivalent to those faced by potential hires, not the exact ones. Of course you ought to know what your company asks for. Furthermore, I don't think its all about the questions. Part of the challenge is to design the exact same circumstances, i.e. puzzles, phone interviews, travelling, amount of time to review what the company requires, length of interviews, and so on.

[codexon]

breezed through after I tipped her off on the coding questions

I probably botched an interview where they expected me to come up with an RB tree fast enough (it was a company that has posted on HN).

Tipping people off to questions is cheating the test, so you have some people trying to temporarily bulk memorize algorithms that they'll forget in another month before an interview. Does anyone else not find this stupid?

[rhizome]

Did you ask them when the last time was that they had to use an RB tree in their software?

[codexon]

No and I doubt they would have hired me because I asked a snarky question.

[antidoh]

> What kind of people set questions in interviews without knowing what answer they're hoping for?

The kind of people who want to "see how you think."