Using template questions in a technical interview

Posted by Desolate Planet on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Desolate Planet
Published on 2011-03-01T22:20:16Z Indexed on 2012/03/29 17:41 UTC
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I've recently been in an argument with a colleague about technical questions in interviews. As a graduate, I went round lots of companies and noticed they used the same questions. An example is "Can you write a function that determines if a number is prime or not?", 4 years later, I find that particular question is quite common even for a junior developer. I might not be looking at this the correct way, but shouldn't software houses be intelligent enough to think up their own interview questions? I've been to about 16 interviews as a graduate and the same questions came up in about 75% of them. This leads me to believe that many companies are lazy and simply Google: 'Template questions for interviewing software developers' and I look down on that.

Question: Is it better to use a set of questions off some template or should software houses strive to be more original and come up with their own interview material?

From my point of view, if I failed an interview and went off and looked for good answers to the questions I messed up on, I could fly through the next interview if the questions are the same.

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