Perl Skills Test

[James Laver]

On 30 Sep 2011, at 21:42, Wendy G.A. van Dijk wrote:

> Well, just the one...  and that goes against my statement (which is enclosed...)...
> 
> ...that this is actually a very helpful book for people who want to interview prospective employees and want to find out more about their Perl skills.  Not all of the questions (and answers) in the book are of the desirable extreme high quality, but the majority is good enough to find out wether the prospective employee has any Perl skills or none, and even what level of skilfulness is in there.   Anybody who needs more than a few Perl developers can use this book, aided by some really good Perl developers, to adapt the questions to the desired highest possible level and find out the exact level of Perl skills of the prospective developers.

In the interview situation, I give them an obfuscated piece of code on paper and ask them what it does. If they get it, I'll probably just hire them on the spot. If not, I'll deobfuscate it a little and ask again, and so on and forth until they get it. Generally if they get it in 3 or 4 iterations i'm quite happy, and that gives flexibility for people who are good but have nerves etc.

That is of course no use to the OP, who wanted to weed people out in advance...

(code sample available privately on request if anyone is interested)

/j