Multiple Important Questions
“What's the coolest thing you've done in the last year?”
“We ask this question to invite an applicant to show off something they're both comfortable with and (hopefully) excited about. The way they approach this can speak volumes about how they perceive themselves: look for enthusiasm, confidence, and empathy. Watch out for: ego, ambivalence. Some quality candidates, especially early in their careers don't respond well to this question due to impostor syndrome. If you foresee or encounter this, you can exchange or pivot to something more direct such as What part of your work in the past year had the most impact? On whom?”
“Tell me about a skill you learned in the last year. What were the circumstances of that learning?”
“This can lead many places, and how a candidate responds can give clues about how they understand personal growth. You might hear about technical skill growth in a very focused way (a particular language/framework or platform), or a broader way (patterns, best practices and principles), soft skills like writing, speaking or process refinement. It's important as an interviewer to also approach this as openly as possible, and to try to leave behind preconceptions about linear growth patterns. Learning is quite non-linear in the real-world, and even if a candidate relays recently learning a skill that you consider foundational or otherwise given for a new team member, recall that you also once had to learn it, and that their path was not yours. The goal here again is to understand more about the person as a whole, to gauge how they approach growth and learning and discover if they are a good match for your team.”
“Let's imagine we hire you: it's six months from now and things have gone poorly. What happened?”
“This tries to uncover a candidate concerns as well as exercise empathy. The goal here is to try to understand what facets of the match between candidate and company lack alignment and might lead to friction. Uncovering this in the interview (instead of six months later) pays huge dividends for both parties. Look for honesty, candor and considered thinking about longer term career goals.” - Andrew Lindberg, Senior Software Development Mentor at Exelaration
“When asking interview questions I try to ask questions that get a developer to get into details on what they have down with technology. Generic technology questions tend to be less insightful. But here are some of the questions myself and the members of my team use:
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Do you primarily consider yourself a front end or backend developer?
This is kind of a trick question to see if someone feels confident on both front and back end tasks. It gets the person to talk about where they are most comfortable.
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Give me an example of a difficult issue you had identifying or fixing code that did not work and how you went about resolving the problem.
Debugging skills and problem solving skills are one of the keys to being a successful developer. Most interviewers focus on language skills rather than this important aspect of the job.
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What qualities in your work approach do you feel make you more effective than another developer?
Some developers can work at warp speed. They develop techniques to do this. They are the best developers. I want to understand if the developer can work fast and what things they do to make them faster / better than their peers.
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Are you responsible for any of the architecture and design work or is your focus primarily on coding and development?
Want to assess where they are in their career and what they are capable of.
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Tell me more about your Development background (Including Projects and Technologies)?
Open ended question to get to know a candidate.
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What are your strengths? What will you do if you are asked to work in an area that you have never worked before by the manager?
Open ended question to get to know a candidate.
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What do you feel are the most important thing to look for when reviewing another team member's code?
If they don’t understand this, they don’t know what’s important to include in their own code.
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What kind of tools / languages do you develop in? Which is your favourite & why?.
Just to get a sense for what they know.
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What types of applications have you built?
Access functional knowledge.
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What steps do you take to get unstuck when dealing with a really difficult problem/design/bug?
Access problem solving.”
- Tom Mercaldo, The President of Aquinas Consulting