My company is currently in the middle of a lot of college recruiting. Most college students/recent grads have very little to show. If you're lucky they had the forethought to save some of their school projects and post them online.
Even a lot of industry people don't have much to show. Plenty of decent programmers don't have serious side projects (or aren't comfortable releasing them to the public).
As for regurgitated answers, I keep my eye out for those. You can usually tell if someone has seen a similar problem before. If I think they have I ask them. I sometimes ask a different question to see if it was raw ability or familiarity.
They do tell you a lot. They tell you whether the candidate can actually write basic code or not. I'm not trying to see if you are a great programmer, I'm trying to see if you are a bad programmer. It can be really difficult to spot a great programmer, but it's usually very easy to spot a bad one.
Anxiety is a real problem however. I try to take that into account but it affects so many people in so many different ways.
Personally I think resume's are worthless. I think the best form of application would involve some form of code submission - either a simple "screener" problem or perhaps a personal project. That might still be followed by an on-site screening interview (people lie and cheat all the time).
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My company is currently in the middle of a lot of college recruiting. Most college students/recent grads have very little to show. If you're lucky they had the forethought to save some of their school projects and post them online.
Even a lot of industry people don't have much to show. Plenty of decent programmers don't have serious side projects (or aren't comfortable releasing them to the public).
As for regurgitated answers, I keep my eye out for those. You can usually tell if someone has seen a similar problem before. If I think they have I ask them. I sometimes ask a different question to see if it was raw ability or familiarity.
They do tell you a lot. They tell you whether the candidate can actually write basic code or not. I'm not trying to see if you are a great programmer, I'm trying to see if you are a bad programmer. It can be really difficult to spot a great programmer, but it's usually very easy to spot a bad one.
Anxiety is a real problem however. I try to take that into account but it affects so many people in so many different ways.
Personally I think resume's are worthless. I think the best form of application would involve some form of code submission - either a simple "screener" problem or perhaps a personal project. That might still be followed by an on-site screening interview (people lie and cheat all the time).