Favourite interview questions
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
Anthony, Instead of asking technical questions, I would be more interested to hear from a candidate how they cope with things they don't know. For example: - what book did you recently read? - do you have a subscription on an IT related magazine? - which websites do you visit / are you registered on? - do you read / follow any newsgroup(s)? My experience is that 50% of development time is research and a good developer must be capable to find the right products/information quickly. Also, a developer which reads IT-books simply because he likes it has an interest in IT from the heart and not because it pays the bills. Good luck with the interview. Regards, Kees
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Don't forget to ask why manhole covers are round!
They are round to accomodate the people who fall into them... otherwise there would be a chance that the person gets stuck and doesn't fall through... also, being round means maximum number of people will be able to stare into the manhole at the same time... after someone has fallen in ;)
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
I like to ask four types of questions; 1) - Technical - I need to know if they have the basic skills for the job and tools we use. Basic technical, such as what does Select Case do, and best practices related to using it (Case else). 2) - Interpretive - I need to see how a person organizes their thoughts. 'How would you present this data?'. If they get a report with 200 data points how would they present it to various audiences. They should not try to use a pie chart for 200 data points... 3) - Kobayashi Meru - the impossible scenario. I use this to see if a person can anaylyze the situation and ask for help. We need people who are hungry to get answers. We need to solve problems and locate answers quickly. If we don't know the answer then we need to ask until I find the right resource. Some people will fumble around, may not know the product limitations, or are too proud to admit they don't have an answer. 4) - General awareness - Asking a current events question, or current environment question such as the color of the waiting area, number of [widgets] or something that will demonstrate that this person is observant and 'in the game'. Good luck Tom Hamilton Intel Corporation, Folsom
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
Q. What does VBA stand for? A. Visual Basic for Applications. available in MS Office Q. What is API? A. Aplication Program Interface, provides access to lower level functions of an operating system. Q. What does "OO" stand for in reference to style of programming technique? A. Object Oriented Programming, refers to utilising classes in you applications Q. What does COM stand for? A. Component Object Model. refers to building your applications out of reusable objects such as DLL's, services etc. Q. What is MTS? A. MS Transaction Server. pre COM/COM+ management service for DLL's and services for NT4 and below, allow object pooling and management Q. What do you use to visualy manage COM+ under Windows XP? A. Component Services. DLL and service hosting service, new MTS Q. What is SMTP? A. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. used to send email on port 25, can be used directly to send mail. Q. What is CDONTS used for? (CDO for NTS - Colloboration Data Object for Win NT Server) A. CDONTS is used to send SMPT primarily on NT 4. Q. What does SDLC stand for? A. Software Development Life Cycle. describes a development project structure Q. What does SQL stand for? A. Structured Query Language. Q. What does DTS stand for? A. SQL Server Data Transformation Service. you create process flow for data manipulation in MSSQL. Q. How do you return last idenity value of a record after an insert query? A. select @@identity or scope_identity(), bonus points for scope_identity() is only avail on SQL2000+. Q. What is VMWare? A. Virtualisation software, software that allows hosting of virtual operating systems, eg development enviroments or production testing envirments. Q. What is DHTML? A. Dynamic HTML. combination of client side java script and html. If you can give a list of technologies you use will be easier to give you some questions. Also what level do you want? Intermediate or Advanced? you play with the best... you learn like the rest...
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If someone can write me a multi threaded excel macro, particularly if it's complex enough to warrant multi threading, I'd be very impressed!
atregent wrote:
I'd be very impressed!
That's the opposite of the response you should have. A good developer knows the right tool for the job, and VBA is not it for anything complex.:~
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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I'm going to be conducting some interviews later this week, which I have to admit, is a new thing for me. The role is for a VBA developer, but also a bit of a general technology all-rounder. The behavioral type questions will be asked by someone else, but it's up to me to delve into the technical side of things. So, I'm looking for some suggestions! What are your favourite interview questions? Cheers, Anthony.
One thing I do is find out what systems or languages they know and then ask them to compare them. Like if they have programmed with both C++ and Java; I’d ask them when they would choose one tool over the other. See if they know advantages and disadvantages of managed memory, multiple inheritance, etc. I find if they can contrast these things well, then they have a pretty good understanding. Bill Westrick
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Q. What does VBA stand for? A. Visual Basic for Applications. available in MS Office Q. What is API? A. Aplication Program Interface, provides access to lower level functions of an operating system. Q. What does "OO" stand for in reference to style of programming technique? A. Object Oriented Programming, refers to utilising classes in you applications Q. What does COM stand for? A. Component Object Model. refers to building your applications out of reusable objects such as DLL's, services etc. Q. What is MTS? A. MS Transaction Server. pre COM/COM+ management service for DLL's and services for NT4 and below, allow object pooling and management Q. What do you use to visualy manage COM+ under Windows XP? A. Component Services. DLL and service hosting service, new MTS Q. What is SMTP? A. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. used to send email on port 25, can be used directly to send mail. Q. What is CDONTS used for? (CDO for NTS - Colloboration Data Object for Win NT Server) A. CDONTS is used to send SMPT primarily on NT 4. Q. What does SDLC stand for? A. Software Development Life Cycle. describes a development project structure Q. What does SQL stand for? A. Structured Query Language. Q. What does DTS stand for? A. SQL Server Data Transformation Service. you create process flow for data manipulation in MSSQL. Q. How do you return last idenity value of a record after an insert query? A. select @@identity or scope_identity(), bonus points for scope_identity() is only avail on SQL2000+. Q. What is VMWare? A. Virtualisation software, software that allows hosting of virtual operating systems, eg development enviroments or production testing envirments. Q. What is DHTML? A. Dynamic HTML. combination of client side java script and html. If you can give a list of technologies you use will be easier to give you some questions. Also what level do you want? Intermediate or Advanced? you play with the best... you learn like the rest...
Good point, I should probably have been more specific about what we're looking for. First and foremost we need an Access/VBA whiz. Most of our DBs are Access/SQL, not my ideal solution, but I think Access has it's place. Admitedly, our main access product has grown pretty complex and I'd love to .net it, but I simply don't have the time, or the pressing need, to do this at the moment. We also do a lot of work with pdfs, so some exerience there would be good, although it's really not that difficult to pick up. And finally, there is a bit of a skills gap when it comes to Excel, which we're hoping to plug. Cheers, Anthony
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Good point, I should probably have been more specific about what we're looking for. First and foremost we need an Access/VBA whiz. Most of our DBs are Access/SQL, not my ideal solution, but I think Access has it's place. Admitedly, our main access product has grown pretty complex and I'd love to .net it, but I simply don't have the time, or the pressing need, to do this at the moment. We also do a lot of work with pdfs, so some exerience there would be good, although it's really not that difficult to pick up. And finally, there is a bit of a skills gap when it comes to Excel, which we're hoping to plug. Cheers, Anthony
Access Q. Why is VBA different to VB? A. VBA is a macro-language verion of VB, VB is used to program applications and VBA is used in applications for automation. Q. What does CurrentDb command do in Access VBA? A. Returns and object that represents current database. Q. What does DoCmd allow you to do in Access? A. Run MS Access actions in VBA modules. eg open forms, open reports etc Q. What command/action would you use in a Macro to execute SQL select statment? A. RunSQL action. Q. Its not possible to use API in VBA, true or false? A. False, you can. Q. In relation to access what do MDW file do? A. Workgroup Database - Access Workgroup Information Database, access system database that stores workgroup/user information and permisions. Q. Why would you use Workgroup Administrator in Access? A. To connect to a different System Database. Q. Why would you convert a database to a MDE format? A. To protect database source code. Excel Q. In Excel what would be an easy way of creating a report on data that is store in an Access Database and what would it be its advatage? A. Easiest - Create a PivotTable on that Access Database. Moderate - Import External Data into a sheet. Easiest - You only need to refresh the PivotTable to update data from Database, Moderate - you need to refresh the Imported Data on a sheet and then the PivotTable Q. What does Vlookup function do? A. Vlookup looksup up a value in a table or array. Q. What does Indirect function do? A. Returns cell value specified by a text string, eg in a cell =Indirect("A1") returns contents of A1 on current sheet. I would recomend not to ask to many tricky questions on function names etc as they are very easy to pick up, what you generaly looking in the applicant is the comprehension that Access and Excel are very flexible and your immagination is the only limit. Let me know how u go. Regards you play with the best... you learn like the rest...
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
the answer would be "it depends".
"thanks for comming in, we'll get back to you". Yeah the questions are very general. What we look for is "It depends, because....." :) Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
