title: C++ interview - testing potential candidates
body: <p>I have to interview some C++ candidates over the next few weeks and as the most senior programmer in the company I'm expected to try and figure out whether these people know what they are doing.</p>
  
  <p>So has anybody got any suggestions?</p>
  
  <p>Personally I hate being left in a room to fill out some C++ questions so I'd rather do a more complex test that I can chat with the interviewee about their approaches and so forth as we go along.  ie it doesn't matter whether they get the right answers or not its how they approach the problem that interests me.  I don't care whether they understand obscure features of the language but I do care that they have a good solid understanding of pointers as well as understanding the under lying differences between pointers and references.  I would also love to see how they approach optimisation of a given problem because solid fast code is a must, in my opinion.</p>
  
  <p>So any suggestions along these lines would be greatly appreciated!</p>