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Comment by yllus | Hacker News Reader

80% of applicants for an internship at a company I used to work at failed FizzBuzz when I applied it to them (same deal, pencil and paper and a choice of any language they want).

The worst was one perky young woman who wrote her answer in three minutes flat, handed it back and asked, "Did I get it right?" I answered, "No...." and from that point on it became the most awkward interview ever.

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Assuming it's for a developer position, why would you continue the interview if they failed FizzBuzz?

The interviews were for all of 15 minutes anyways. I'm not so bent on time efficiency that I felt it necessary to save myself and the applicant twelve minutes by concluding the interview early. Also, I'm human and that's a level of cold that I didn't want to go to.

Could be skilled in an other field, or just an interesting conversation. If the interview's scheduled for a fixed time anyway, might as well make the best of it.

Maybe you should administer the test towards the end of the interview after you've gotten to know the candidate a bit and allowed for time for their nervousness to wear off.

If 80% of candidates are failing, you want to ask it right at the start, to minimize the time you waste interviewing people who aren't qualified.

But that seems to assume that FizzBuzz is the defining test of a candidate. I guess if that works for the interviewer then that's the way to go.

A minimum competency test is reasonable. Better to know such things before the interview stage IMO; its a terrible waste of everyone's time to show up, fail fizzbuzz and leave.

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