Technical interview questions often consist of brainteasers,
riddles and such, designed to measure your analytic and
problem-solving skills. Common technical interview questions
are along the lines of "How would you improve this pen?"
and "Why are manhole covers round?"
Simply put, manhole covers are round to prevent them from
accidentally falling through the holes. (Square and rectangular
covers could fall through diagonally.) To further impress the
technical interviewer, you might add that round covers are
easier to move away from the holes, because they roll. You
might also add that a cylinder is the strongest shape against
the compression of the earth, so a manhole cover is round to
fit the cylinder beneath it.
But many technical interview questions don't have "correct" answers.
For example, unless it's obviously broken, there is no single
correct answer for "How would you improve this pen?" For these
types of technical interview questions, interviewers are not
interested in the correctness of your answers. Rather they are
interested in the way you logically arrive at your answers and
share your thought process along the way. They are also likely
to be interested in your ability to "think outside the box".
Sharing your thought process with your interviewer demonstrates
your communication and analytical abilities. It also helps to
engage you and the interviewer in a dialogue, from which you
might pick up clues that steer you in the direction the
interviewer would like you to go. For example, if an interviewer
asks which of the U.S. states you'd remove, a good first
response might be, "What do you mean by remove?"
Because there are an infinite number of technical interview
questions that interviewers can throw at you and many consist of
hypothetical scenarios with no single correct answers to boot,
there are few "canned answers" you may memorize in advance. For
the hypothetical, you must have the ability to quickly manufacture
answers in your head. That's precisely what technical interviews
are all about.
But you can at least hone your analytic and problem-solving skills
in preparation to answer technical interview questions, by
practicing answers to the brainteasers, riddles and such floating
around the Web. Many were submitted by interviewees after actual
technical interviews. Some even include complex technical interview
questions from top-notch companies that love to challenge
interviewees, such as Microsoft.
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