Honestly - the absolute best way I've found is to sit them down with at a
computer with some basic development tasks and let them have 2-4 hours to
work through them.  The low end folks may just walk out.  Go ahead and give
access to Google because it is a good development tool :)

One of the best examples I've seen for CF (and actually did as part of an
interview process several years ago) was replicating the CFDUMP function
from scratch and test by passing in complex variables (query results,
arrays, arrays of arrays, etc).  If they can nail a recursive function in
CF out of the gate with "interview" pressure you've got a darn good start
and know they can problem solve.  I would do this over a written test
(which I've always detested).

Honestly - I don't care if they know the latest lingo, know a list of
design patterns or when/where to create Abstracts as long as they can take
a development task and solve it.  It's the last bit that gets actual work
done.

While I realize you are at a University - there are some darn fine
developers out there without degrees so unless it's seriously political -
don't throw away a resume just because they don't have one.  And I'm not
saying that because I fall into that category (it hasn't harmed my career),
but as an employer, you may miss out on the best developer for the job.


On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Chris <h_chris...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am with a public university and asked to interview applicants with
> Coldfusion(CF) and Flex skills for an opening. The position requires
> someone who has worked 3-4 years in CF and Flex.
>
> I was moved into this position and I picked CF/Flex after I started so do
> not have a first hand experience of a CF/Flex interview, though a Web
> search reveals dozens of websites with questions.
>
> I have worked with Coldfusion 8 and 9 and I know I can ask questions about
> following topics.
>
> 1. Check for CF basic understanding, ask about functions which are rarely
> used to test depth of knowledge in CF.
> 2. Ask about CFC, Bean, Gateway to test OOP understanding in CF
> 3. How the facade pattern is used in CF?
> 4. Recent CF projects of candidate. Question the design, implementation
> decisions and possible performance improvements in the projects
> 5. Ask them to develop a Bean on whiteboard.
> 6. Contributions to an open source CF project
>
> Since the opening expects someone with a Bachelor's in Computer Science, I
> can ask the typical questions(algorithms, data structures, design patterns,
> OOP, contract by design, agile programming concepts, Operating System and
> Networking concepts, information security, bit fiddling in C, RTTI idiom in
> C++ assuming candidate lists C,C++ on his resume).
>
> I realize a Web search can reveal lot more questions, but since I have not
> interviewed someone for a CF background before, I want to know if items 1-6
> listed above are sufficient or do they need more additions?
> Are they too simple that most people who have worked 12-18 months in CF
> would know?
>
> I do not want to make the interview unduly hard or easy.
>
> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>
> P.S. I went through the usual books Career cup, Programming Interviews
> exposed and their websites to learn how interviews are done in most places
> today.
>
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-- 
Dawn

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