Job Interview test [closed]

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I have a first job interview for a software engineer position but in the email they state that I will have to write out a program at the interview stage. Does everyone do this?

What kind of program might it be for a graduate?

The job is for a .NET developer, but I can use any language, so I will stick with C#. I'm actually S**Ting it; I have no clue what they are going to ask me to do.

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Many companies will spend much of the interview time asking candidates to write actual code (usually on a whiteboard or piece of paper though sometimes on a real computer) as this is a great way to see if they will be successful in the job. Some things to keep in mind:

1. Talk out loud. Often interviewers care about your thought process and approach to the problem as much or more than they care about the actual code you write.
2. Ask questions. Interviewers will often intentionally make a problem ambiguous just to see if you'll notice and seek clarification. Ask things like: "Who is the audience?" "Should I include exception handling?" "Shall I optimize for performance or just make sure it works?"
3. Don't get flustered if you're struggling. Tell the interview what you're thinking and they'll often point you in the right direction. Partial credit counts.
4. Get a good night's sleep before your interview. Lots of whiteboard coding and related discussion can be surprisingly grueling.

Good interviewers will be able to extract what you've learned over the course of your lifetime, so don't worry too much about last minute study sessions. It's too late. That said, it's not a bad idea to brush up on basic language syntax and core data structures and algorithms.

Here are some sample problems you may want to practice writing out on paper:

1. Write a function to calculate the nth number in the Fibonacci sequence.
2. Write a function to sort 2 arrays of numbers (without using existing libraries).
3. Design a Deck class and a Card class and write a function to shuffle a deck of cards.
4. Design a Circle class and write a function to determine if 2 circles intersect.
5. Design a LinkedList class and write a function to reverse the elements in the list.

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At least be able to do this FizzBuzz

By the time the interview is scheduled, there's probably not too much you can do in the order of preparation.

Just remember, they want to know about your problem solving process. Just try to think out loud as much as possible and if you truly don't know something just say so.

No matter what type of question they ask, just go with the flow and do your best on it. The last thing any interviewer wants to see is someone who gets flustered or upset due to a particular question. I'll be the first to admit that some of the questions asked in an interview may be lame and unnecessary, but you are trying to get a job from these people and you will just have to humor them.

When you have more time to study, you should probably start looking at Questions every good .NET developer should be able to answer.

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We issue programming tests all the time. There are many reasons for doing this, over and above the obvious one of testing coding ability. We look for

a) Coding style
b) Ability to develop and implement algorithms
c) Ability to follow instructions
d) Ability to communicate what has been done

But by far and away the most valuable thing about a programming test is discussing with the candidate why they did what they did. In this discussion it becomes obvious rather quickly how much the candidate really understood the test and their own design and implementation. It also roots out plagiarism very quickly.

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Usually software development jobs give simple tests. I've never once interviewed for a job that required any more than a simple implementation of a function.

Her'es a few simple tests I know of:

• FizzBuzz: http://www.geekschool.org/programming/fizzbuzz/
• For a job at MS, I was asked to write a function to reverse the words in a string.
• At a different job, I was asked to write an implementation of the Join function in c++.
• A friend of mine got this one for game development: Write a function to test simple rectangle collision

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More than likely it's something simple like FizzBuzz, just meant to weed out the totally unqualified people.

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If the company don't ask for you to write code in the interview, that's really, really bad. Go for another company.

The type of test depends. I've done test that i had to write small C code, with pointers or recursive functions.

But generally, they ask for a basic asp.net application (I'm also C# developer), like just one form, inserting and reading from the DB.