How to Perform a Good Interview

Recently I was asked by a friend to help screen some candidates for a software developer position. I’ve never done one before so I began writing down questions that came to mind that would help me assess the candidates abilties as well as his personality. Here is the outline that came out of my thought process as well as a template for how to come up with meaningful questions:

Outline

Intro

  • Hi, thanks for joining
  • Lets jump right in

Environment Specific

  • What project frameworks/development cycles are you familiar with?

Technical (Breadth && Depth)

  • How many languages have you worked with?
  • Years in each language
  • Complexity of problems/solutions
  • How big/long are projects
  • Projects with different business units?
  • Do you work on small/large problems?
  • Longest project you’ve worked on?
  • Any new technology you’ve been looking into?
  • How do you keep up with new technology?
  • What development cycles have you worked with? preferences?
  • What are your experiences with an agile environment?

Technical Questions (rest/OO/spring/agile)

  • Rest vs Soap, whats the difference? which one do you prefer?
  • Describe a rest url for this scenario
  • Basic HTTP methods supported by rest
  • What do you like about microservices? advantages? disadvantages?
  • Talk me through a function that you would right to reverse a string?
  • Building strings, why use stringbuilder vs concatenation?
  • Tell me about your front-end experience, Middle tier, back end

Cultural/Behavioral

  • How do you stay active with tech? do you have a system in place to stay updated?
  • Have you worked on customer facing projects?
  • How do you deal with irate customers or deal with customer problems?
  • Have you been involved in any innovation projects with your previous companies recently?
  • Have you seen any issues/inefficiencies in any process and what did you do to help improve that?
  • How can you help QA to better test new functionality
  • Have you read any books recently? pleasure or business?

Resume Specific

  • Job hopping?
  • Experiences matching company?
  • Reasons for looking for new jobs?

Role Specific

  • Have you ever used mongo?
  • Do you have any experience with M2M architecture?
  • Any experience with hardware?
  • How will you add value to this company?
  • What experiences have you had that will help you excel in this role?

Behavioural

  • Tell me about a time where you mentored a junior dev
  • How closely do you work with QA, and what are your views on QA

Action oriented

  • Have you ever gone above and beyond your role requirements? tell me about an experience. Were you recognized?
  • Tell me about a time you took ownership, why did you do this, any challenges that came up?

  • Tell me about an initiative that you have started on your own

Adaptibility

  • Have you ever dealt with changing priorities?
  • Tell me about a significant project change, how did it impact you?

Communication

  • in progress

Conflicts

  • Have you ever worked with difficult employees, or had disagreements with colleagues?, how did you handle it?

Goals

  • give an example of a goal that you achieved and how you did it

Decision Making

  • in progress

Problem Solving

  • Have you ever made a mistake that was pushed to prod? what steps did you take to improve the situation?
  • Have you ever dealt with any production issues? or is that handled by another team?
  • Tell me about a time you noticed a problem in either code/process/etc., how did you take the initiative to correct it?

Team Work

  • Tell me about a time where you worked with a low performing team, or a specific member, how did you handle the situation.

Pressure

  • How do you feel about working under pressure
  • Tell me about a time where you had to meet a deadline, did you work OT, etc.

Closing

  • I think that covers everything I wanted to know
  • Do you have any questions for me?

Types of Questions (Conversation VS Interrogation)

  • Yes/No
  • Tell me about a time..
  • Tell me more..
  • How did you handle/respond..
  • Have you dealt with..
  • Describe a situation when you…
  • Give me an example of a time you
  • Think about an instance in which you…
  • Tell me how you approached a situation where…
  • Talk about your experience with..
  • how would you rate yourself with…
  • Why would you choose this over that…

Question Template

  1. Initial question
  2. Purpose
  3. Underlying question
  4. Listen