Interview, what to expect?

[ResidentBiscuit]

I have a phone interview for a software engineering intern position at a major IT company. I'm not too sure what to expect here, the email just mentioned it'll be with one of their actual software engineers and it'll be technical questions. Anything I should brush up on?

[Script Coder]

what type of IT company (network, games, ect.)?
A google should bring up some useful results.

[ResidentBiscuit]

Healthcare. I know they don't expect me to actually know anything about healthcare, I've been to an open house they had about a year ago and talked to a couple of their software engineers.

[Luc Lieber]

I couldn't even begin to extrapolate what they might ask you, but here's my first rule of interviews.

Rule # 1 - be honest, if you don't know something, just say so. Knowing what you don't know is just as important as knowing what you do.

I'm by no means an interview expert, so you can either take that or leave it.

Good luck!

[vlad from moscow]

Say them that your interview costs money!:)

[slumpers]

Most likely it will be a couple technical questions to make sure you actually know what your talking about. They do this to separate the likely candidates from the kids who got their degrees from worthless degree-mill schools. It'l be like "please explain how you would create an object in c++" or "Describe bubble-sort to me" along with some questions about any experience you have working in a programming environment and such. Just be prepared to talk about programming and you should be fine.

Find out as much about the company as you can, and try to ask some questions about them when prompted near the end of the call.

I had a phone interview once where I had a serious brain-fart on the technical questions and couldn't answer a single one. It was really embarrassing, I couldn't even explain OOP. But that was a random cold call from someone who found my phone number from a resume I posted online. God that sucked.

If you get really really unlucky it will be a HR person asking you HR questions, which suck. I know they say it'l be with a software engineer, but you never know. HR people always say "Tell me about a time where you were put in a leadership position" and "Tell me about a time where you had to solve a difficult problem".

[Luc Lieber]

The last time that I was interviewed by a HR representative, the first thing that they asked me was: "Why are manhole covers round?" That really caught me off guard.

[Cheraphy]

What was your response? Mine would have been something akin to "keep people from falling in by accident and to prevent people from going in to cause problems.

[cire]

But that doesn't really answer the question of why it's round -- which is to keep it from falling down the hole. It is a rather silly question to be asking in this context, though.

[xerzi]

That doesn't really answer it either, you can make it square (I know there are some here that are square) and not affect fallibility. What you are answering is "Why do man hole covers exist?".

[helios]

you can make it square (I know there are some here that are square) and not affect fallibility

But then you have to make it at least sqrt(2) times larger than the hole on one side.

[Cheraphy]

woops, misread it XD Sorry, I'd just woken up.

[Luc Lieber]

What was your response?

I thought about it for 15 - 20 seconds and simply replied, I don't honestly know. I'm assuming that he was seeing if I would just make up a B.S. answer or actually think about it.

[cire]

That doesn't really answer it either, you can make it square (I know there are some here that are square) and not affect fallibility.

The only way to ensure a 'square' cover can't fall into a hole is to make it larger than the hole.

Here's an interviewer's take on why he asks the question which is, perhaps, more interesting than the question.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bgroth/archive/2004/09/27/235071.aspx

[Catfish3]

What about hinged manholes?

[devonrevenge]

would have said its the most practical way to cover a round hole.

goodluck by the way, let us know if it were successful :)

[chrisname]

A. Manhole covers are round.
B. x is a manhole cover.
C. x is round.

1. If A and B and not C, contradiction.
2. A and B.
3. Therefore C.

[edit: Made a mistake in #1]

[devonrevenge]

is that tautology?

[chrisname]

Nope, I assumed A (and B) to prove C. If I then used C to prove A ("C holds for all values of x..."), it would be a tautology.

[edit: I'd have to use C to prove A to answer the question "Why are manhole covers round", but not the question "Why is a manhole cover round"]

[helios]

Nope, I assumed A (and B) to prove C.

Are you saying that there is some x such that ¬((A && B) => C)?
All proofs are either tautological or contradictory. Contingencies don't prove anything.

If I then used C to prove A ("C holds for all values of x..."), it would be a tautology.

It would be a hasty generalization, since you can't use the particular to prove the universal.

I'd have to use C to prove A to answer the question "Why are manhole covers round"

None of these propositions can be used to answer that question. Most importantly because A is a definition, and definitions can't be proven.

Boy, lately you've taken to use logic to say useless things, haven't you?