Waiki's Blogspot

I am very grateful for a point that was stressed in a past company I worked for: In an interview, always, always, always ask for the candidate to code something from scratch. Even something basic, like reverse a string. Most developers will breeze through this question, and you can move on with the interview. However, occasionally, you will catch the one or two people with good looking resumes, who fail miserably at this high school level task.

I admit, coding on a whiteboard or paper is a bit tricky if you've never done it before. But this task is so straightforward, that you shouldn't need a IDE or notepad to do. Much like 1+1 shouldn't need a calculator, writing a for loop shouldn't need an IDE.

Depending on level, intern, grad, intermediate or senior ask them to write more complicated code. Admittedly, it gets harder with more complex tasks, but good candidates can still fill in the gaps on a whiteboard.