Interview Questions

May 23, 2007

I just addressed a question on BACFUG about what types of questions to ask a Senior developer in an interview. For reference, this was my reply: Personally, I like more open-ended questions. People applying for senior-level positions don't (at least initially) need to answer "do you know the difference in private and public variables?" (Though I will resort to basic questions if it's becoming apparent that the candidate may have lied on the resume). The problem with "have you used Library XYZ before?" is, you may get a lot of "No" answers from perfectly qualified developers. To avoid that, I typically try to ask things that are a bit more open, and let the interviewee answer however they like: "Tell me something about your latest project, what kind of tools and languages you've used, any design patterns or third party software, what went well on the project, things you'd change in the next version, etc" Sometimes I'll hand the candidate a piece of paper and say something like "draw out an object model for a chicken, or a tic-tac-toe game, or something equally common" (I think I stole the chicken idea from another developer years back.) This will usually get the person talking -- you can hear how he/she communicates, and you'll get more info about the developer's background than you would with just a string of one-word answers. Hey let's face it -- developers are often times shy introverts that don't communicate well verbally...but give them a geeky conversation to discuss (i.e. that cool library I just got done building), and hopefully you'll get a more useful answer. Hth PS. Make sure the interview is conducted by someone with a _technical_ background. Nothing drives me nuts more than an a non-techie trying to give a technical interview via a set of scripted, expected responses. That's not an interview, that's a glorified word-search game, and a great way to lose qualified candidates!