Common Interview Questions / CMaster / All

Disk spinning puzzle

CMaster — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:35:16 -0700

Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?

Answer:

There are only two sensors required. Place sensor close together. Reset sensors. The switching sequence of two sensors will indicate the directional rotation of the disk easily.

This is common approach in industrial automation.

1 Vote(s)

Sum of hats Puzzle

CMaster — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:36:06 -0700

There are 3 people Abel, Bill and Clark. Three of them have numbers written on their hats. One can only see the numbers written on others hats and can not see the number written on his own hat. Sum of numbers on any two 2 hats is equal to the number on the third hat.

Now the following event occurs

1. Abel was asked about the number on his hat. He replied "Don't Know"

2. Bill was asked about the number on his hat. He also replied "Don't Know"

3. Clark was asked about the number on his hat. He also replied "Don't Know"

4. Abel was asked again ,to which he replied "50"

Now the question is how did he know it. And what are the numbers on other people's hats.

1 Vote(s)

What are the advantages of the demat account?

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:21:54 -0700

Sample answer:

A demat account is similar to a saving bank account with a difference that instead of money shares are held electronically in this account.

The advantages of a demat account are:

- Eliminates the risk of forgery, counterfeiting and loss due to events like theft, fire, mutilation etc.;

- Reduces brokerage charges;

- Ensures quick ownership of securities;

- Reduces the time spent in stock trading to a great extent as problems like signature mismatch, postal delays are not encountered;

- Eliminates the need to undertake tedious paperwork;

Holders of demat accounts do not need to pay stamp duty.

1 Vote(s)

How would you call an expense incurred in the unsuccessful attempt to realize payment of a Account Receivable? Give an example.

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:19:40 -0700

Sample Answer:

Expenses incurred in an unsuccessful attempt to realize a payment of an account receivable are termed as ‘Uncollectable Account Expense' or ‘Bad Debts'. An example of an uncollectable account expense is - Account Receivable originating from a credit sale in the month of February is considered as uncollectable after its recovery becomes impossible. The sale represents an expense in the month of February.

1 Vote(s)

What are Natural Accounts? Give example from your practice

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:16:12 -0700

Sample answer:

Natural accounts are user defined accounts. In these data is captured at the transaction level. Natural accounts exist for all five categories of accounts. Some examples of these accounts are - purchase of a car for business purposes, payment of salary, receipt of interest.

1 Vote(s)

What is GAAP? Name at least three of the principles

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:13:21 -0700

Sample answer:

The term GAAP - Generally Accepted Accounting Principles refers to the common principles, standards that companies resort to for compiling their financial statements.

These principles are commonly accepted methods of recording and reporting accounting information that have been accepted as authoritative standards. GAAP standards are imposed on companies to ensure that a minimum level of consistency is maintained in the financial statements.

It proves a great help for investors while analyzing financials of companies while making investments. The basic principles underlying GAAP accounting are:

- Principle of Consistency;
- Principle of Non-Compensation
- Principle of Regularity;
- Principle of Sincerity;
- Principle of the Permanence of Methods

1 Vote(s)

Define cash and accrual methods of accounting, what are the advantages/disadvantages of each method?

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:11:40 -0700

Sample answer:

There are two methods of accounting - Cash Based Accounting and Accrual Method of Accounting. The main difference between the two methods is in the approach towards revenues and expenses.

Cash Based Accounting: This is the most commonly used method adopted for maintaining personal accounts. It recognizes revenue, income as and when the payment is received and the expenses are recognized when payments are made.

Accrual Accounting: As per this method, revenue and expenses are assigned to the accounting period in which they are earned or incurred. The method is based on the principle - expenses for a period that are the costs of running a business or earn income should be compared to the revenues for that period.

1 Vote(s)

Can you describe income statement and name it limitations?

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:10:20 -0700

Sample answer:

Also known as ‘profit and loss statement', ‘statement of revenue and expenses' it is one of the three major financial statements. It measures a company's financial performance for a specific accounting period. It informs about the income earned, amount receivables, expenses incurred, profit and loss over a period. The statement is created on monthly, quarterly or annual basis. To derive the figure for actual profit or loss all costs are subtracted from the revenue to reach the ‘Net Income'.

1 Vote(s)

What are the trial balance limitations?

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:08:15 -0700

Sample Answer:

A trial balance only enters the totals of credits against the total of debits. The fact that a trial balance tallies is only a basic assurance that there are no mathematical errors in the preparation of accounts. There are limitations to a trial balance. Errors which cannot be detected through a trial balance are:

Errors of Omission: An error of omission occurs when a transaction is not recorded in the books of entry. In such a case the credits and debits for the transaction would balance and omitting to record it would have no impact on the trial balance.

Errors of Commission: These are errors made by the accounting staff while recording the transactions. These errors generally involve cases where the amount entered and the side (debit or credit) are correct but the head is wrong. For example, putting postage expenses under the head of fuel expenses would be termed as an error of commission.

Compensating Errors: Errors of this type have a tendency to nullify the effect of errors committed earlier. This is a case of multiple errors, where the errors put together tend to cancel out each other.

Errors of Principle: This category refers to instances where an income or an expenditure is not allocated correctly between the capital and revenue heads.

The other common errors that go unnoticed in a trial balance are:
- Errors of Original
- Errors of Reversal and
- Errors while Transporting

1 Vote(s)

What is the purpose of the trial balance?

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:06:58 -0700

Sample Answer:

A trial balance is an accounting worksheet in which the balances from all ledgers maintained in the business are compiled under the headings - Debit and Credit. It is prepared at the end of every reporting period.

The objective behind preparing a trial balance is to ensure mathematical correctness of the double entry accounting system being maintained by the company. If the amount received after totaling all debts equals the amount received after totaling all credits, a trial balance is taken to be balanced and it also means that there are no arithmetical errors in the ledgers maintained. A trail balance is also used for preparing final accounts etc.

1 Vote(s)

What is the accounting equation?

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:04:38 -0700

Sample Answer:

Accounting equation is the basic equation that keeps all the accounts of the business in a balance. When a business is started, the owner puts in some money in order to provide finance for the operations. This is the owner's interest in the business and is therefore termed as equity/owners equity. This money is an asset for the company. Representing the relation as an equation:

Assets = Owner's Equity

In case the owner of the business is in need of money and decides to take a loan from the bank, it would have the impact of increasing his Assets. The loan is a liability. Hence the above equation would be changed to: This leads to the above equation becoming:

Assets = Liabilities + Owner's Equity

1 Vote(s)

What are the five basic categories in which all accounts are grouped?

CMaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:01:44 -0700

Sample answer:

An ‘account' is the most basic concept of accounting. Accounts are maintained to record information. It is a specific location where transactions of the same nature are recorded. To explain with the help of an example, recording all expenses incurred for buying equipment like a lawn mower, mushroom knife, weed cutter, spades etc. by a person involved in gardening business would be recorded in the account ‘Equipment'.

The basic types of accounts can be represented as:

Assets: These are properties of value that are owned by the business. These assets can be tangible or intangible. Building, real estate, machinery, merchandise, goodwill are assets of a business. They are generally divided into three sub categories - Current, Fixed and Intangible.

Liabilities: A liability is a legal obligation that a business owes. The liability could accrue in terms of money, goods or services. Generally discharged in cash. The most common examples of liabilities are - wages payable, salaries payable, taxes to be paid and outstanding debts.

Equity: Equity is the interest of the owner in the assets of the business. After all liabilities have been discharged what is left is the owner's interest/owner's equity. This is also termed as ‘Net Assets'.

Revenues/Income: Under this head, money that the company earns is recorded. The company may receive money from selling its goods, providing services or dividends from securities are recorded.

Expenses: Expenses are the costs that a company incurs for staying in business. Examples of expenses are - salaries, rent, interest on borrowed money etc.

1 Vote(s)

How to increase stack limit in w3wp.exe?

CMaster — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:42:16 -0700

The default stack size of IIS starting with Windows Server 2003 was changed. Prior to 2003, it was set to 1 MB but in 2003 and later, it is set to 256 KB.

You can change it with The Microsoft COFF Binary File Editor (EDITBIN.EXE).

Example:

EDITBIN /STACK:1048576 w3wp.exe

You can use DUMPBIN utility, which is provided with the 32-bit version of Microsoft Visual C++, to view the sizes:

1 Vote(s)

Can a Silverlight application create or change Office Documents via Open XML?

CMaster — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:38:58 -0700

It depends on the library. For example, you won't be able to use Open XML SDK from Silverlight - it is only available for the .Net Framework. However there are number of custom implementations of OpenXML Standard in Silverlight.

Example from CodePlex:

This is a Silverlight proof of concept application that takes a simple Word document and displays it in the form of a book.

http://openxmlpageturn.codeplex.com/

1 Vote(s)

How to use conditional operator in Razor to alterate CSS class on anchor element

CMaster — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:31:49 -0700

This questions tests your hands on experience with Razor View Engine - the new View Engine in ASP.NET MVC 3 framework.

The answer is to use parentheses after the @ (at) delimiter.

Razor view code:





...



My Link



...

1 Vote(s)

Cubic array

CMaster — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:04:43 -0700

Given a cubic array made up of NxNxN smaller cubes: the cubic array is N cubes wide, N cubes deep and N cubes high.

Question: How many cubes are on the surface of the array.

Answer:

There are N³ cubes total. If you can calculate how many cubes are hidden you can answer this questions. The number of hidden cubes is simply a number of cubes with sides (N-2)x(N-2)x(N-2). ie. (N-2)³.

Thus, the answer is

N³ - (N-2)³.

Bonus question:

Calculate number of 4D hypercubes on the surface of NxNxNxN hypercubic array

1 Vote(s)

Have You Ever Fired Someone, if yes how it make you feel?

CMaster — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 01:06:52 -0600

Good Answer

"Yes, I have. Though it is never easy, for the company to succeed, it must make tough decisions on those in its employ. Without making those tough decisions, the company would fail and everyone that works for it would be without employment. I recognize that, so while I may not enjoy it, I also know that it is these tough decisions that help the company survive in the tough economy."

Read more: http://www.everydayinterviewtips.com/management-interview-question-have-you-ever-fired-someone-if-yes#ixzz1aMOt7WzQ

1 Vote(s)

What would you do if senior management demanded delivery of software in an impossible deadline?

CMaster — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:38:46 -0600

This is a variation of an iron triangle question:

The Project Management Triangle (called also Triple Constraint) is a model of the constraints of project management:

TIME - COST - SCOPE

if senior management demanded delivery of software in an impossible deadline, which means changing time, one or two other components of the triange should chang as well.

More details:
http://commoninterview.com/project_management_questions/what-do-you-do-when-project-priorities-constantly-change-/

1 Vote(s)

What methods would you use to retain employees within the company

CMaster — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:19:11 -0600

Per Wikipedia,churn or attrition rate is a measure of the number of individuals moving into or out of a collective over a specific period of time. It is one of two primary factors that determine the steady-state level of customers a business will support;

How to manage Attrition?

1. Transparent reward policy clearly communicated to all team

2. Create opportunities for employees both - self development and career path

3. Team spirit and engagement. Give more responsibility and ownership.

4. Recognizing sucess and providing appreciation (team events, lunches, etc.)

5. Regular health index surveys as feedback to management

1 Vote(s)

How to create add bookmark (favorites) link in JavaScript

CMaster — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:13:17 -0600

Answer
In the context of the World Wide Web, a bookmark(favorites) is a locally stored Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). All modern web browsers include bookmark features. The key to answering this question is mentioning X-browser compatibility. The implementations can vary from very simple to more complex. Here is one of the approaches which is using window.sidebar and window.external objects for IE and Firefox and createElement for Opera.



function Bookmark(title, url) 

{ 

if (window.sidebar) 

{ 

window.sidebar.addPanel(title, url,"");	

return true;

} 



if( window.external)

{ 

window.external.AddFavorite( url, title);

return true; 	

}



if(window.opera && window.print){ 

    var elem = document.createElement('a');

    elem.setAttribute('href',url);

    elem.setAttribute('title',title);

    elem.setAttribute('rel','sidebar');

    elem.click();

    return true;

} 





return false;

}

1 Vote(s)

How to read file asynchronous with C#

CMaster — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 01:13:41 -0600

How to read file asynchronous with C#?

.NET provides Stream.BeginRead Method with following parameters:

buffer
The buffer to read the data into.

offset
The byte offset in buffer at which to begin writing data read from the stream.

count
The maximum number of bytes to read.

callback
An optional asynchronous callback, to be called when the read is complete.

state
A user-provided object that distinguishes this particular asynchronous read request from other requests.

Example:



FileStream fs = new FileStream(fileA, FileMode.Open);

Byte[] data = new byte[200];

long timeNow = Stopwatch.GetTimestamp();

fs.BeginRead(data, 0, data.Length, delegate(IAsyncResult ar)

{

 int bytesRead = fs.EndRead(ar);

 fs.Close();

// do some stuff…

}, null);

// do some stuff…

1 Vote(s)

Filling Matrix Interview Puzzle

CMaster — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:52:47 -0600

Puzzle:

You are given a matrix N x M size. Each cell of the matrix contains a random capital letter of English alphabet ["A".."Z"]. If matrix contains letter "A" in position {i,j} you should substitute all letters in column i and row j with a letter "A". You can't use extra memory. The matrix can store only capital letters "A" to "Z" in a cell.

Example:

Write an algorithm and solution in code (C++/C#/JAVA).

1 Vote(s)

Finding Celebrity logical interview puzzle

CMaster — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:26:25 -0600

Finding Celebrity logical interview puzzle

Puzzle: You are on a party with N guests. Some people at the party know each other some don't. However there is a celebrity who joined the party. Everyone knows him, but he knows no one. There is only one celebrity at this party. Imagine you have a function bool IsKnown(P1, P2) which takes two people as an input and returns true if P1 knows P2 or false if P1 doesn't know P2.

Question: Write an algorithm to find a celebrity. What is the complexity of this algorithm?

Bonus question: What if there are m celebrities? How would you change the algorithm? What would be the complexity?

1 Vote(s)

Tell Me About A Big Choice You Had To Make In Your Life And Outcome

CMaster — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 01:29:30 -0600

When you attend an interview, you need to overcome many tricky questions of the interviewer. And we all know that an interview is not the perfect place to think about the answer and waste time. You need to play a rapid fire round with your interviewer especially when you are asked about your personal life. In an interview you may come across this question "Tell me about a big choice you had to make in your life and outcome". Well this sounds a bit tricky, right, because you will often wonder what points to focus on as a big choice that you have made.

In our day to day life, we face many challenges and of course, learn to overcome them. So which one will you quote as a big choice in your life? Well here are some points that can help you frame your answer in an acceptable way. First, it is important to practice this answer before you head on for the interview. Frame your answer in a lucid and comprehensible manner so that your interviewer understands what you are trying to say rather then making your interviewer feel "What!! Why!! How!!"

Secondly, it will be better if you make your big choice from your career. That means a turning point of your professional life and how you have dealt with it. Since your interview involves our professional career and your future, it is better state a few big choices you have made with respect to your career. Fourthly, explain how this big choice has helped you advance your career. Get into the details about how you benefited from this big choice and what the outcome was. This will help the interviewer understand how focused you are and how you learn from your own experiences which is very important for a person's career growth. This quality of yours will definitely help the company in many ways if you do get selected.

Through this answer you can prove that how vital resource you can be if you get selected for this job. You can also discuss about the skills on which you had worked on for making the big choice, what were the complexities you have come across and how you have prevailed over by using your proficiency. This is an important point that you should highlight in you answer. But remember you should not exaggerate about yourself. The question is to know your big choice and how you have made it happen. It is not about how great you are for making it possible.

In an interview, always be yourself and do not pretend to be someone you are not. Everything that you say should be true and you should be able to prove it to your interviewer in every way possible. Remember an interviewer has the knack of bringing out the truth from a candidate.

Try not to be long-winded, instead, try to focus on your actual accomplishments and the steps you took to achieve them. Remember that in an interview, the interviewer wants to know whether you will be able to contribute something to the company and this is a great opportunity to prove that you can.

1 Vote(s)

Open/Closed doors logical interview puzzle

CMaster — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 01:00:46 -0600

Full question:

You are standing in a corridor with N closed doors. The person walks by you and opens every door. Then the second person walks by and stops by every second door; If the door is open he closes it, if it is closes he opens it. The third person does the same with every third door; fourth person does the same with every fourth door and so on until N people would walk the corridor. The question to you is to tell which door is open and which is closed after that.

Solution:

The approach I took trying to solve this problem was to write down all state switches for 1..16. Let's say that 1 means door opened and 0 means door closed for simplicity.
The initial state of our system (all doors closed) would be represented in the form of an array:

After first person all door will be opened:

The second person would close even doors:

If we continue this calculation we would end up with following 16x16 matrix, there I marked in yellow then the state switch is happening.

Where the final state look like:

This pattern threw me off a little at the beginning, but after careful look on the matrix it is obvious that we have 1's at the places there we had odd number of switches and 0's where we had even number of switches. However, number of switches we did is actually number of divisors of a given number (count amount of yellow cells for a given column - door).

This would lead us to the solution:

The doors with numbers which has even amount of divisors will remain closed and with odd amount of divisors will be opened.

Now the question is how we can calculate if number X has odd or even number of divisors… Fortunately, Math101 comes to rescue.

If you remember, In number theory, a square number, sometimes also called a perfect square, is an integer that is the square of an integer; in other words, it is the product of some integer with itself.

So, for example, 4 is a perfect square, since it can be written as 2 × 2, same with 9 (3x3), 16 (4x4), etc. One of interesting properties of a square number is that it has an odd number of divisors, while other numbers have an even number of divisors. Why? Because, an integer root is the only divisor that pairs up with itself to yield the square number, while other divisors come in pairs.

Thus, in the question above the full answer would be:

The doors which are located on perfect square positions will be open, all other doors will be closed.

1 Vote(s)

How would you do 301 redirect with PHP?

CMaster — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 19:43:11 -0600

Solution:

In the HTTP protocol used by the WWW, a redirect is a response with a status code beginning with 3 that induces a browser to go to another location, with annotation describing the reason, which allows for the correct subsequent action.

Here is the example how to do it in PHP:

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header( 'Location: http://www.commoninterview.com' ) ;
?>

1 Vote(s)

Pirates have to decide how to divide their loot of gold coins

CMaster — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 14:12:21 -0600

Puzzle: A pirate ship with total crew of N pirates acquired a chest with K gold coins. Now they have to divide up the loot.

By long term pirate tradition the rules are as follow:

- The most senior pirate gets to propose a way to divide the loot.

- Each pirate, including the most senior pirate himself gets to vote.

- If the majority accept the proposal, the loot is divided as proposed.

- If the majority decline the proposal, then the most senior pirate is executed, and they start over again with the next senior pirate

Assume the pirates has perfect logic, extremely greed and don't want to die.

What solution does the most senior pirate propose?

Solution:

As with any puzzles of this kind lest use induction with
N=1,2,3 etc until we get the pattern:

if N=2,
Let's say pirate #1 being the most senior, he would just vote for himself and that would be the majority thus he is going to keep all the money, leaving pirate #2 empty handed.

if N=3,
Pirate #1 has to one other person to vote for his plan. Pirate #1 has perfect logic so, he realize that in case his proposal declined and he is executed pirate #3 will get nothing (see N=2 scenario).

So, his proposal is straight forward, give 1 coin to pirate #3 and keep (K-1) coins. Pirate #3 has to vote for his plan or he guaranteed to get nothing.

if N=4,
Now pirate #1 needs one vote as well, he know if he is executed,
pirate #3 guaranteed to get nothing, so the solution to give him one coin and keep the rest to himself.

If we continue the sequence following pattern will emerge:

So the general solution is to give away Math.Floor((N-1)/2) coins keeping K- Math.Floor((N-1)/2).

1 Vote(s)

Sample cover letter (Junior Software Engineer)

CMaster — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:58:03 -0600

Dear Hiring Manager:

I was interested to see your C# Developer posting on Monster and would like to learn more about this opportunity. I am very interested in applying for the position. As you will see from my resume, I have over 5 years of overall experience in IT field with 3 years of expertise in different aspects of .NET framework, using Visual C# and over 3 years of experience working with MS SQL Server, writing stored procedures, extended stored procedures, triggers and optimization of data bases.

As you requested, I am disclosing the minimum annual salary I would require to accept employment with your firm. This amount is $65K per year excluding benefits. This amount is based on my experience and the cost of living in the Ann Arbor area.

If it appears that my qualifications meet your needs, I will be happy to discuss my background in a personal meeting.

Sincerely Yours,

Joe Doe

1 Vote(s)

Sample cover letter (Java Software Engineer)

CMaster — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:43:35 -0600

Dear Hiring Manager,

Please consider me for the position as advertised on web site dated.

I am Master of Applied Mathematics with more than 11 years of experience in system analysis, design, development and implementation of small, medium, and large software projects. I also have more than 5 years of experience in project leadership.

SKILLS:

- Expert in object oriented design and development (UML, Java, J2EE, EJB, Servlets, JSP, Struts, XML, XSLT, WebSphere Application Server, MQ Series, IIS, Apache, Tomcat);

- Very experienced in relational databases design and development (DB/2, MS SQL, Oracle, Sybase, ANSI SQL, Transact SQL, PL SQL)

-Very experienced in project leadership (Microsoft Project, MS Vision, PVCS, Microsoft Visual Source Save, CVS)

CERTIFICATIONS:

- Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition, Sun Microsystems, In Progress

- IBM Certified Specialist (IBM WebSphere Application Server), IBM, 2003

- Sun Certified Web Component Developer for J2EE platform, Sun Microsystems, 2002

- Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform, Sun Microsystems, 2001

- Microsoft Certified Professional (SQL Server), Microsoft, 2000

The attached file is a copy of my resume that details my background and skills. I would appreciate an opportunity to talk to you to discuss my candidacy.

I will contact you if you give me the telephone number and most convenient time for you. Should you need to contact me, I can be reached at 323-232-2323 or email@address.com.

Sincerely,

Joe Doe

1 Vote(s)

How do you manager underperforming employees?

CMaster — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 23:55:43 -0600

Strategy Statement:

We would define underperforming employees as a staff member who has a detrimental effect on productivity, morale or deliverables of the group. Under performing employees are risks for the company and the business. This is a change to prove your management experience and leadership skills.

The framework for addressing the problem of an underperforming employee should already exist in your organization and you should keep close contact with your HR representative regarding the case. The actions should be taken to help employee perform to the required standard, rather than to dismiss them.

By the law, the employer must ensure that the employee:

First, understands what is expected of them

Second, understands in which areas they are not performing to the required standard

Third, is given appropriate training and support

Fourth, is given sufficient time to improve

Employee must be issued with appropriate written warnings and they have the rights to notice and representation.

Also, the best way to avoid having underperforming employees in your group or company is not to hire them in the first place. As part of the answer you can mention your hiring process and selection methodology.

Sample Response:

I identify the strengths, the areas of expertise, which each person brings to the task and I take my selection process and interviewing really seriously.

However, the problem of having underperforming team members occasionally arise. My policy is to be open and upfront. I clearly define what is expected from every of my reports and how do I measure their performance.

If I see someone lagging behind, I am trying to understand the problem and propose the solution in form of training, coaching or work reassignment. I ensure that employee get fair amount of time to correct his or her actions and improve.

If this doesn't work and I strongly feel that employee doesn't have room for improvement I do engage with our HR department to follow company procedure for managing underperforming personnel.

1 Vote(s)

How do you motivate people around you?

CMaster — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 11:25:21 -0600

Strategy Statement:

The interviewer wants to know more about your managerial philosophies with regards to motivation strategies and your ability to enable others.

The topic of motivation is hard to cover in simple interview answer and there are hundreds of book written on the subject and motivational theories are the main topic to the study of industrial-organizational psychology. The key things to know is that motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is a motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the work, while extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the individual.

Common extrinsic motivations are rewards like money or threat of punishment. Based on the two types of motivators Frederick Herzberg's developed famous two-factor theory which distinguishes between:

- Motivators such as interesting work, recognition and responsibility) which give positive satisfaction

- Hygiene factors such as salary or benefits. Such factors despite common believe do not motivate if present, but, if absent, result in dissatisfaction.

The name Hygiene factors is used because, similar to hygiene, the presence will not make you healthier, but absence will cause health degradation.

While successful managers employ both types of motivations to ensure highest productivity of the team in was proven that significant portion of human behavior is energized and directed by unconscious motives i.e. intrinsically motivated. Professor Steven Reiss performed a serious of studies involving more than 6,000 people which resulted in 16 factors theory - 16 basic desires that guide nearly all human behavior.

The list includes such desires as
Power,
Independence,
Curiosity,
Family,
Vengeance,
Status and others.

"These desires are what drive our everyday actions and make us who we are," Reiss said. "What makes individuals unique is the combination and ranking of these desires. Every person has a unique desire profile."

We recommend reading his book "The 16 Basic Desires That Guide Us" for more information.

Sample interview question response:

My most strong believe is that my team members should be highly motivated to give their best and realize their full potential. As first line manager I cannot control salary and benefits our company provides but I can ensure the work-live balance is in place and work conditions are above industry standards to address extrinsic motivators.

Form the other side; I pay a lot of attention to intrinsic motivators. I take care in assigning tasks, making sure that I have right person for the job. When communicating my expectations to employees, I make sure they understand exactly why they were selected for a job. If I can connect people and tasks based on their background, education, and experience, I can feel confident that they are properly motivated and will give the project their all.

1 Vote(s)

Describe a situation then you had a conflict in your team, how did you handle it?

CMaster — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:31:48 -0600

Strategy Statement:

Just as no interviewee is perfect, no person is blameless. The employer needs to get a sense that you are not above blame and are prepared to be proactive in resolving workplace conflict. This is the opportunity to showcase your management or leadership experience and inspiration.

Knowing basics of conflict resolution would help to build a solid foundation to answer any question about conflict situations. Researcher Thomas and Kilmann in 1976 proposed five basic ways of addressing conflict:

Accommodation - one party must surrender to accommodate the other party. This is win-lose type of conflict resolution.

Avoidance - as the name suggests the strategy is to avoid conflict by ignoring it. Avoidance can be useful as a temporary measure but really dangerous long term solution and usually results in lose-lose conflict outcome.

Collaboration - Thomas and Kilmann viewed this as the only win-win solution to conflict. The approach suggests working together and finding a mutually beneficial solution.

Compromise - bring the conflict to third party arbitration. The aim of any conflict resolution is to reach an agreement and most often this will mean to compromise.

Competition - accept one party at the expense of another. This often can be done by involving management and letting them choose the winner.

The question clearly suggests Accommodation or Collaborations strategies to be used in the answer.

Sample Response:

I have found that any efforts toward conflict resolution without open collaboration are ineffective. Accepting responsibility, creating grounds for resolution, and following up--these are essential ingredients of conflict resolution.

Once I had conflict with my colleague regarding testing tools we been planning to use. He insisted on in-house solution while I felt strong on using existing third party test harness. While started as regular discussion around tools conflict quickly aggravated. I had to act fast and reached out to my colleague to have one on one meeting. During the meeting I made it clear that I do not question his technical expertise nor his ability to develop great in house solution.

However I iterated that his time is valuable and instead of building something we shell can buy it. At the same time he can concentrate on developing features which would advance our business. We spend two hours brainstorming new and innovative ideas he can work on and both were very happy with the outcome of this meeting. Moreover, during the review time my colleague remembered this situation and commented positively on my leadership skills.

1 Vote(s)

What do you do when project priorities constantly change?

CMaster — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:19:05 -0600

Strategy Statement:

Are you agile? Can organization still be maintained in a flexible environment? Many people confuse agility and chaos, flexibility and poor planning, be sure to base your answer on advocating first and avoiding second. It is also well known, that any project is executed under certain constraints, which traditionally include scope, time and cost.

Those three constrains are known as "iron-triangle" due to the fact that as in triangle changing one side would lead to affecting two others, changing one constrain cannot be changed without impact on the others.

Frequent changes in priorities usually mean scope change which directly affects cost (budget) and time (schedule). This is true for both formal large scale projects such as building of a bridge and small projects such as house cleaning.

The construction of Sydney Opera House is one of the classical examples of vague scope and poor planning. The project started in 1957 with initial estimates of $7 million of cost and 6 years of work. Without clear plan and with constant scope change the project was falling apart.

As an example during construction phase multipurpose opera hall was redesign into concert hall which caused the layout of the interiors to be changed, and the stage machinery, already designed and fitted inside the major hall, was thrown away. A theatre, a cinema and a library were added, and the minor hall was drastically redesigned. These changes were primarily because of poor original planning and lack of scope definition, which did not make it clear how the Opera House was to be used which in turn lead to constant priority changes as new requirements were discovered.

The Opera House was formally completed in 1973, having cost $102 million the project was completed ten years late and over-budget by more than fourteen times.

Sample Response:

Changes in priorities are not something extraordinary in our industry. The way we handle and prepare for the priority switches make all the difference.

When priorities change, the two things that are generally impacted are the schedule and cost and I do my best to communicate it clearly to the management the severity of the impact.

I see frequent changes in priorities as weak definition of the scope, which might be due to nature of business, poor management, force major circumstances and many other reasons. In such cases, my approach is to split the job on as small pieces as possible, so then the priority changes won't leave any part of the project part-done.

1 Vote(s)

Sample cover letter (Software Engineer)

CMaster — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:08:40 -0600

Dear Hiring Manager,

As my resume reveals, I have a Master's degree in Applied Math and Ph.D in Computer Science. I have more then six years of professional software development experience. I enjoy working in a high energy and high performance work environment. I have
worked on and learned a great deal from several very interesting and complex commercial projects.

Recently I was working on the project to build online XYZ system available at www.xyz.com. Now this project is successfully completed, I am anxious to take on new challenges and build upon my knowledge base.

I have enclosed my resume for your review. I would like the opportunity to meet and share more about my qualifications and the ways in which I can contribute to the team.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Alex Ivanov

1 Vote(s)

Sample Offer rejection letter

CMaster — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:04:44 -0600

Dear Mr. Crawford:

I would like to thank you once again for the fine offer which you made to me for a position of Software Developer reporting to Mr. Gupta. I was impressed with your company and the manner in which my visit was handled.

Unfortunately, I must inform you that I find it necessary to decline your offer. I am accepting a position with the XYZ in Seattle. Their training program will enable me to pursue my engineering interests immediately and to attend graduate school in the area.

I appreciate your interest on my behalf and wish to express my thanks again for all of your courtesies.

Very truly yours,

Joe Doe

1 Vote(s)

SQL statement to aggregate multiplied rows

CMaster — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:02:59 -0600

Full question:
Given a SQL table which has three columns: Name, Amount and Date the task is to write a SQL statement to aggregate rows in a such way that each row has unique Name along with multiplied values of Amount cell for that name (see picture below for details).

Solution:

SQL aggregate functions return a single value, calculated from values in a column. At the first glance the question seems to be very trivial usage of SQL aggregates. However, along with all available aggregate functions there is no multiplication.

Transact-SQL provides the following aggregate functions:

AVG
MIN
CHECKSUM_AGG
COUNT
ROWCOUNT_BIG
COUNT_BIG
STDEV
GROUPING
STDEVP
GROUPING_ID
SUM
MAX
VAR
VARP

Again, no multiplication.

Aggregate Functions (Transact-SQL)

So, the solution would be to utilize summation to achieve multiplication. From math 101 you might remember that the logarithm of a number is the exponent by which a fixed number, the base, has to be raised to produce that number.

From that definition:

X = EXP(LOG(X)), i.e if we take exponent from logarithm of x we will get same x.

The rest is simple, by using properties of logarithms that the logarithm of a product is the sum of the logarithms of the factors:

LOG(X * B) = LOG(X)+LOG(Y)

Hooray ! We got to the sum ! Finally combining those two formulas together, we have

X*Y = EXP(LOG(X)+LOG(Y))

Thus, the solution would be surprisingly simple SQL statement:

1 Vote(s)

How virtual functions are implemented internaly?

CMaster — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:40:27 -0600

Answer
In 1994 Microsoft published a patent on implementing Virtual Function tables in OOP Programming Languages:

"A virtual function table for a class contains addresses corresponding to the virtual function members associated with that class.

The virtual function table is used at run time to invoke the virtual functions indirectly. Each primary class with a virtual function member has an associated virtual function table. The virtual function table contains the addresses of each virtual function member.

The object data structure for such a class contains a virtual function table pointer (vfptr). When memory for an object is allocated at run time, the virtual function table pointer is initialized with the address of the associated virtual function table. Thus, all objects of the same class type point to the same virtual function table. To implement the invoking of a virtual function, the compiler generates code to access the virtual function member through the virtual function table."

METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL FUNCTION TABLES IN A COMPILER FOR AN OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

1 Vote(s)

How can you simulate a fair dice using a fair coin?

CMaster — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:10:54 -0600

In other terms, you have random number generator function Rnd2 you need to produce Rnd6 function by using Rnd2.

1 Vote(s)

Drinking beer interview puzzle

CMaster — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:52:23 -0600

Full question:

You are meeting in a bar with your best friend, Alex.

You ordered 60 ounces (3 Imperial pints) beer pitcher to drink between you. Alex is late and you drink half of a pitcher while waiting for him.

Then he finaly arrives you give the pitcher to Alex and he drinks half of what's left, and gives it back to you.
You drink half of what's left, and give it back to him ... you continue in the same way until there is no beer left.

Question: How much do you drink, and how much does Alex drink ?

1 Vote(s)

What's the expectation of dice roll ?

CMaster — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:46:00 -0600

Answer
In probability theory, the expectation of a random variable is the weighted average of all possible values that this random variable can take on.

Thus, for one dice the expectation is

1/6*(1+2+3+4+5+6) = 3.5

and as the expectation of two indepentent distributions is the sum of the expectation of each, the answer would be

3.5+3.5 = 7

1 Vote(s)