Chapter 17
Nontechnical Questions
Non-technical questions are an important part of the job interview process. Some of these questions are asked early in the process to determine whether your experience, education, and goals make you appropriate for the job in question — there’s no point to proceed with the technical interviews if you’re not the kind of candidate the company is looking for.
Other questions are asked after the technical interviews are over and the company is considering making you an offer. Although you won’t get an offer on the strength of your nontechnical answers alone, a poor performance on nontechnical issues can lose you an offer you otherwise might have received.
Non-technical questions are challenging because often no right or wrong answers exist. Different people can have different answers to the same question.
Most interviewing books discuss how to effectively answer all kinds of nontechnical questions. Rather than rehash what these books say, this chapter focuses on the nontechnical questions that are particularly common in programming interviews.
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