So we have all these posts saying how it is so hard to find developers, and half the posts saying hiring is broken.
Maybe the best time to do one of these interviews is right after taking your algorithms final. I think I got 120 on that thing, but I would have a hard time recalling what BFS and DFS did without reviewing it.
You're given a starting node in a linked data structure and you want to visit, collect, or search all of the nodes that it can reach, and do so without duplication. If you can solve that problem correctly, you've just used or re-invented one of DFS or BFS, and could come up with the other one after a moment of thought about the order in which you visit the nodes. These are not magic spells that you have to go to Hogwarts to memorize; they're the two obvious approaches to solving a really straight-forward problem statement.
For the people who are surprised that anybody could have a problem coming up with these solutions on the spot. What do you guys do all day that has you implementing these CS algorithms so often that you've effectively memorized them
Maybe the best time to do one of these interviews is right after taking your algorithms final. I think I got 120 on that thing, but I would have a hard time recalling what BFS and DFS did without reviewing it.