Honesty while interviewing
What's the deal with it? I'm looking for comments from people who can speak on both sides. In my opinion, you shouldn't need to tell the interviewer if you've already seen the question/ asked the question. This is almost equivalent to sitting in an exam and not solving a question just because you know how to solve it. In case I mention that I've seen the question, I'm not given any points for my morality, nor is it going to compensate for any low points I may have had during the interview. I'd lose the job either way. If I have a chance in securing it, why would I go out of my way to hurt my chances? Edit- where would you draw the line now if you are asked the same question twice while interviewing with the same company? This seems like a pretty hypothetical scenario, but humor me. CMV. Please š
Even if for no other reason, the interviewers can often tell if you're regurgitating a known answer (at companies like Google, detecting this is part of interview training). They won't always tell you that they know but it could be part of their feedback.
Good to know Google does this. Thatās creepy
You canāt accurately detect when a person has seen the question or knows the answer. You can only guess... I think youāre lying to yourself if you think you can.
"Is your model fitted to the test data?" (data snooping beyond training subset)
Always pretend like you never seen the question. Donāt be a sucker.
If they didnāt write the test question themselves why should they be upset that you did research, studied, and prepared? Either the question is bullshit (ok we all know itās bullshit but nobody will admit it) and not representative of the kind of stuff you need to know.ā¦ or by studying and learning solutions in advance youāve gained valuable knowledge to the kind of problems they will want you to solve.
Been on both sides of it. Donāt be honest. Donāt blurt out the optimal right away - thatās a dead giveaway hint to them. Pretend to struggle. Take your time. Mention the brute force. Talk out loud. Then lead into your optimal after a few minutes. Itās their fault for not coming up with unique questions. Not your fault for being prepared.
What if they came up with a unique question and then someone leaked it?
If everyone came up with unique questions and changed them say every year, the probability of passing all the rounds because you've heard the question before goes way down
Same question in same loop? Yeah I probably will tell him I just got this question and gave him a weird look as to make them look like they are disorganized. I assume they will debrief, and you donāt want to take the chance there.
Interesting. How is that different from the previous scenario? Isn't it still them who are preparing the questions? I guess what I'm getting to is, why does morality end up becoming a deciding factor? Similar to the previous instance, suppose I tell them and they give me a harder question which I don't end up solving, I'm still at loss
At least in Amazon, people write detailed feedback including question and answer which is read by all interviewers during debrief. It will come as a red flag that you didn't call it out. If you get a different question it may be simpler as well. However, if you are flagged as dishonest, there is no chance.
Interviewers *think* they know when youāre regurgitating an answer but Iāve been in positions where I was asked a problem Iāve never solved before, solved it relatively quickly and coded fast, and the interviewer suspected that I had seen it before.... like sorry bro, I know my shit With that said, I would only tell the interviewer that Iāve solved it before / know the answer if 1. I knew FOR SURE that I was aware of the optimal solution. Youād certainly lose the job if you say you know the answer and what you present is suboptimal. 2. I could easily communicate the solution so that a 10 year old could understand it. Without that, I would just walk through the problem and if I came to a point where I gauged that I answered too easily / interviewer suspects me of knowing, then I would mention āI think Iāve seen this pattern applied to similar problems beforeā No harm done, you used past experience to solve it which is what you do irl
If Iāve understood the problem and how to solve it (not memorized the solution), then I donāt see any reason for telling the interviewer. If itās a problem that needs you know some rare concept/algorithm Iād tell the interviewer that I know the concept/algorithm. Interviewing needs some luck anyway!
Did anyone directly asked you if you've seen this question? If not, then why would you screw yourself by pushing the interviewer to switch to the question he is unprepared to ask??
Even if someone did, won't agreeing to it still change the course of the interview?
The question is about honesty. There is no point in honestly answering the question, which nobody asked.