What would be the impact of using cheatsheet in a technical interview

Question

I have just had (my very first!) interview for a support / development role, which has been advertised as not needing experience in any particular technical languages, as they would be taught on the job.

I was told by the recruiter that there would be a technical test, but 'nothing too heavy'.

I have several languages listed on my CV, ordered by familiarity. A few days before and on the journey, I looked over some basic syntax cheatsheets for some of the languages I'm least familiar with and haven't used for a while, including SQL, so I could at least say something about them.

I was very surprised and shaken to be handed a technical test at the beginning of the interview with several intermediate level questions on SQL, and be left to it. My first thought was to make use of the cheatsheet I brought with me, but I couldn't ask whether this was acceptable, so I didn't, and I know I made several syntactical mistakes.

My question is: Is is acceptable to use a syntax cheatsheet in a technical interview, for a language you have listed as only having a familiarity with?

This is very similar to this question - Would it be a good idea to bring a cheatsheet to an in-person technical interview?, but I think my question isn't quite a duplicate, as the job description specifically said that SQL wasn't essential, and my CV made it clear that I only had a familiarity with it. Also, the cheatsheets were for syntax only - I could have explained the concepts and steps required if asked.

Answer 1

I have conducted interviews for multiple technical positions. Most of the time there was a pre-test that the candidate would complete at home, though several times it would be done in person. I never had anyone ask to use a cheat sheet or a search engine during the in-person testing, but several have told me that they had to Google a problem while doing the at-home assignment.

As an interviewer with a background in development, I don't have any personal issues with an interviewee going to documentation, man pages, or even code samples to help them. In the "real world" nobody is expected to be able to write perfect code without outside influence.

The way I see it, the true test is if a person can be presented with a problem that is somewhat outside their direct experience and they are able to look to external sources to guide them to providing a solution.

Of course, there is the question of what a technical interview is intended to prove. If applying for a senior developer position, I wouldn't think of using a code interview as it won't tell me anything about an applicant's ability. I only use code problems for recent graduates or people making a transition (QA to dev, for example) as a way to judge general understanding of techniques, paradigms, and best practices. The only way that I could justify using code as a judge of ability would be an extended development challenge that would take several days or a portfolio that I could look through to see how the person thinks, organizes their code, etc.

In short, I don't see any reason that once you have been given a test and you can judge it to be of sufficient difficulty (it's not just testing logic or basic knowledge) that you couldn't ask if you could make use of a reference guide you brought with. If you are denied, just relax and focus on showing logic over function - if your IDE would help remind you of the order of parameters in a function call, for example, don't sweat if they're in the wrong order. Your code doesn't have to actually compile, you just need to demonstrate that you can give a coherent answer.