Haha, I still love watching that video, it is very entertaining but it doesn't make me want to join the company.
I agree that coding assignment are important. I interview for my company time to time, and you would be suprised on how many people strugle with very simple stuff.
Some people are good talkers in interview, and they know the "right phrases", but the only way to know if they can actually code is by giving them a real problem.
There is two way to do it:
1. Make them come on site, and let one hour aside for an assignment on a workstation. The drawback of this, is that the interviewee is probably in a uncomfortable setting for him, using whatever tools are on the workstation, that he might not be used to... etc.
2. Even better, prescreen them. Tell them to set aside an hour of time, at home, or at place where they are comfortable, and just email them the problem, and they should come back with a solution, withing a given time.
You can then discuss the solution together as fruther pre-screen, and when the person comes in site, at least you know he is pretty good at coding.
Of course, the problem has to be unique so they can't just google the solution.
You can give them a ACM contest style problem, or just a more practical problem.
A while back, I noticed first hand that one of my previous employers hiring quality declined a lot, when they stopped giving out programming assignment to potential new hires.
Many companies I have been at used the interview process as a means of getting new ideas, user feedback, product review, and more importantly as a way to get possible solutions to probelms they were facing by getting people to code a solution and looking at how they resolved issues.
There was no right/wrong answer. It did require the interviewer have tech/code skills to discuss problems but it proved much better than giving people abitrary assignments from a code bank and getting a HR person to go through a checklist of known solutions.
It also sorted the people who actually enjoyed what they were doing from those simply looking for a paycheck.
I agree that coding assignment are important. I interview for my company time to time, and you would be suprised on how many people strugle with very simple stuff. Some people are good talkers in interview, and they know the "right phrases", but the only way to know if they can actually code is by giving them a real problem.
There is two way to do it:
1. Make them come on site, and let one hour aside for an assignment on a workstation. The drawback of this, is that the interviewee is probably in a uncomfortable setting for him, using whatever tools are on the workstation, that he might not be used to... etc.
2. Even better, prescreen them. Tell them to set aside an hour of time, at home, or at place where they are comfortable, and just email them the problem, and they should come back with a solution, withing a given time. You can then discuss the solution together as fruther pre-screen, and when the person comes in site, at least you know he is pretty good at coding.
Of course, the problem has to be unique so they can't just google the solution. You can give them a ACM contest style problem, or just a more practical problem.
A while back, I noticed first hand that one of my previous employers hiring quality declined a lot, when they stopped giving out programming assignment to potential new hires.