C++ interview - testing potential candidates

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I have to interview some C++ candidates over the next few weeks and as the most senior programmer in the company I'm expected to try and figure out whether these people know what they are doing.

So has anybody got any suggestions?

Personally I hate being left in a room to fill out some C++ questions so I'd rather do a more complex test that I can chat with the interviewee about their approaches and so forth as we go along. ie it doesn't matter whether they get the right answers or not its how they approach the problem that interests me. I don't care whether they understand obscure features of the language but I do care that they have a good solid understanding of pointers as well as understanding the under lying differences between pointers and references. I would also love to see how they approach optimisation of a given problem because solid fast code is a must, in my opinion.

So any suggestions along these lines would be greatly appreciated!

c++
17 Answers

Get Codility.com to screen out non-programming programmers, this will get you a limited number of mostly reasoable candidates. Sit for an hour with each of them and try to build something together (a micro web server, a script for processing some of your data, a simple GUI). Pay attention to communication skills, i.e. how much effort does it take to understand the candidate. Ask the candidate for recommendation of books related to the subject (C++ software development in your case). Follow Guerilla Guide to Interviewing, i.e. answer yourself honestly, if the person is smart and gets things done. Good luck.

user_6098250

Take a look into this C++ test. They have a questions about differences between pointers and references as you require.

Here is full list of topics:

  • Fundamentals: References & Pointers, Const Correctness, Explicit
  • Standard Library
  • Class Design, Overloading
  • Virtual Functions, Polymorphism, Inheritance
  • Memory Management, Exception Safety
  • Miscellaneous: Perfect Forwarding, Auto, Flow Control, Macros

These guys are really serious about their questions, they also made the great list of C++ interview question which you might ask your candidates: https://tests4geeks.com/cpp-interview-questions/

user_22699800
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