A mate of mine asked me to help him out with some code once, so I did an
example for him, which I then found out was for an interview... I was a
bit p****d off about this, but in the end, my mate could not get his
head around the code, so did not try to pass it off as his:
Thing here is to have some time to go through the code before the
interview - bearing in mind, that the solution may be somewhere between
hand coding and compiled from the Internet :)
I think a combination of asking someone to do a test in their own
environment + a bit of on the spot challenges will give you a balanced
view, you want someone who can go away and work at their comfort, but
you may want someone who can do stuff under a little pressure too,
although interviews are probably up there with exams, so take both
results as a pinch of salt too. Asking someone to write code under
pressure is "harsh", but asking them to give you a more abstract
solution / approach to a problem is not so bad.
The best interviews for me to show off my abilities, from an interviewee
perspective, involved talking to the boss and someone who new about
coding. Also meeting the team I would be working with was good. The
best interview like this included an informal lunch with some of the
team where I was able to talk to them, have a bit of a laugh and was
still "assessed" but in a lot more relaxing way :)
Glen
allandt bik-elliott (thefieldcomic.com) wrote:
agreed on that
On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Ibrahim Y <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
at the end you need your work done in any case in specific time with the
best performance.
so, giving him tasks related to your work in real environment with ability
to access internet on anything he needs will be the best way to decide how
he will be useful for you -imo-
Ibrahim
On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Ian Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 9:53 AM, Steven Sacks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Don't ask questions. You won't learn anything. Make him code some
stuff.
Something tricky. Come up with something good. That is, if you care
if
they know how to code.
(for once!) I kind of agree with Steven.
Talking to the interviewee - asking questions - _is_ important,
because one of the most critical things you need to find out is
whether they'll fit into your team, and getting into a decent
conversation with them is one of the ways to judge that. But that's a
whole different topic, and probably not one for this list.
However to get an idea what their coding abilities are like, you can
do worse than get them to write a couple of functions for you to do
specific things. On paper. With a pencil. :-D
A 'what's wrong with this syntax'? test is good, too. So is a 'what is
this function meant to do?' - showing them a listing.
You can also get a rough idea of their architectural/code organisation
skills in a similar way, by detailing a simple system and getting them
to throw together a rough diagram of how the classes in it might
interact (UML or whatever, your choice).
You'll still need to ask coding-related questions to get some idea of
the breadth of their experience. Here it's good to ask specific
questions, not general 'so, what about this whole MVC thing, then?'.
Be more specific - and ask more about _why_ than _how_. If they don't
understand the _why_, the how is often just a regurgitation of
rote-learned stuff or what they might have read on Wikipedia today.
At the end of the day, though, it very much depends what role you're
trying to fill, how big your team is, what this guy's responsibilities
are going to be, whether he'll have to talk to clients, etc. etc.
HTH,
Ian
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--
Glen Pike
01326 218440
www.glenpike.co.uk <http://www.glenpike.co.uk>
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