[Web4lib] test ideas for web job candidates

[Deborah Kaplan]

What everyone else has said about finding out if the person can
do project planning is very true. But once you've done that, you
want to find out if they can program. A web developer friend
offered the following basic interview question:

 "a very easy programming question. Like "how would you write a
 function to convert a number from 1 to 99 into its english
 equivalent?" Our actual in-house programming test involves
 parsing a comma-separated list.  We figure someone who
 understands programming can learn a given technology."

That being said, asking a programming question won't be helpful
if you have someone in the interview is capable of judging the
results, and seeing if the process went well. You don't need to
know a specific programming language to ask a question like this
(usually programmers answer this kind of question in pseudocode,
which means not in any particular language, but just going
through the process), but you do need to know something about
programming per se.

If you don't have somebody who can ask a question like this, I
find asking negatives is very helpful. "Tell me about a major
programming mistake you've made, why it was wrong, and how you
would do it with what you know today." You might not understand
the technical details of the answer you are given, but you can
absolutely see whether or not somebody is a critical thinker from
a question like this. Or: "what's your favorite programming
language? Great, now tell me what is wrong with it." If they can
recognize the flaws in the thing I like best, that is also a red
flag for me.

-Deborah
-- 
Deborah Kaplan
Digital Initiatives Librarian
Brandeis University