And as they're all similar style questions, they should just read up on these. Hold off on interviews until you're confident, or just schedule the less-desirable firms first, so that you have enough time to read up.
Interviewees know that these questions are coming, they can control the schedule, and they're the only ones who know their own energy and state. Nobody tells them that it's up to them to do flow control. But it's a hot market and people want good programmers. Even if you don't do tree searches or inversions in your normal work day, you can show that you're good because you can understand this stuff. Most candidates can't. So please, take your time, skim the textbooks, take a few notes, maybe do a few flash cards.
So please, take your time, skim their resumes and maybe do a bit of github code reviews before inviting someone to sit down. Hell, do it while you're taking a shit in the office if you, as an employer, are overworked. There's a pun in there.
As for their code, I learn a little bit about their programming style -- and it's often unflattering and unhelpful, as these are usually personal projects where people write code below the standard they'd use at the office -- but it tells me little of what parts were hard, what parts involved real insight from the candidate, and what parts were pasted from stack overflow. Given a github URL, how much time do you think it takes to figure out where the interesting parts are? And what's the information payback of that time, given the little information you get about a person's actual capabilities from a bunch of text saved on a server?
I know that everyone's their own special snow flake, but I don't have more than the 45 minutes to give them a fair shake. And it has to be fair - a question that they should probably have enough context to know, and who's answer can't be bull-shitted. I've got 45 minutes to give as objective an interview I can, balancing the Type 1/2 errors of missing someone good, and hiring someone bad.
1 a week was an example of what I was doing when I went interviewing. I mentioned that as slow enough to read up as much as you need. Did you want more? Less?
[Edit: not speaking for my employer, whose name I don't want to mention. ]
It was the fact that I'd taken the time & effort to meet with these people and to not even get so much as an email back... it's not right. People shouldn't be treated that way, job candidate or not. It's basic manners.
