I’ve had the fortune or misfortune of interviewing a lot of job candidates over the years. It amazes me how often someone will claim to know something, sound reasonable, but then if you quiz them on it, it becomes really obvious that they don’t know much. To flush this out, we had a three-question test that would tell you a lot. People who got the right answer were ahead of the game, of course, but even looking at how people approached the answer (right or wrong) would tell you a lot, too.
I remember one case where the answer involved casting a value. A candidate had impressed me until faced with the question to which he said (more or less): “Well, there’s this function. I think it is called ‘cast’…” I think the look on my face told him that I actually knew the answer (not surprising, since I was giving the test) and that wasn’t it.
[Oleksandr Kaleniuk] has a C quiz of only five simple questions. They reminded me of at least one of my old company’s three-question quiz. I don’t want to say too much about the character of the test because I don’t want to give away the answers, but if you think you are a C wizard, go check it out. Then come back in the comments and tell us how you did. Just try to avoid posting spoilers (although you should probably avoid the comment section until you come back).
