[Web4lib] Offtopic: Interviewing and Hiring a Web Developer

[John Fereira]

At 12:04 AM 6/29/2007, Mike Kmiec wrote:
>This may be a little more technical that what you need, but there 
>are some good recommendations here:
>
>http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html
>
>One thing I like to do is to try and find out how a potential hire 
>thinks with a question like "How would you go about determining the 
>number of traffic lights in the city?" A question like this - 
>without a right answer, really - allows you to get an idea of how 
>they go about problem-solving. Some may try to figure out the number 
>of streets that intersect; some may estimate the volume of traffic 
>and base the answer on that; some may try and get more information 
>out of you - Do you want *all* traffic lights, or can I exclude the 
>flashing yellow ones?
>
>Of course, these days I often add on "...and you're not allowed to 
>use Google," but that's just me.

Real time problem solutions are good for technical interviews however 
I wouldn't add the stipulation that one could not use Google to solve 
the problem.   Many years ago I interviewed at NASA and they gave me 
a problem to solve and told me that I could use whatever resources I 
wanted (including asking for help from someone working there).   The 
goal isn't to have the person provide the correct answer but too how 
they go about obtaining an answer.  In the "real world" resources 
like books, google, and co-workers are available so an interview 
which gives the person the same tools they would use if they were 
really working for you would give a better indication than creating 
an artificial environment.

A type of problem that I have used is to just download some code (or 
write it myself) and put a bug in it then ask the person to find the 
problem and fix it.  It could be as simple as changing the spelling 
of a word that is used in the output.

The other thing I have always done when interviewing programmers is 
to ask them to bring something that they wrote that they can 
demonstrate.  If you're interviewing a web developer they should be 
able to show you a site or two that they created.









John Fereira
jaf30 at cornell.edu
Ithaca, NY