Interviewing a junior developer
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
You really aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer are you?
Surely, he was joking?
Unlikely given his previous form.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility
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Make sure the candidate walks the walk and does not only talk the talk. IOW give him a small assignment to work on. In our company this was creating a small form that reads in a txt file and shows it in a textbox. Each other character needed to be converted to uppercase. A progressbar and a label indicating how long the convertion took was mandatory. test duration was about 30 minutes (give them time to finish up) and we asked some questions afterwards like how could you speed up things. Do you know this and this object. Where would you look for info if i gave you this problem, etc... All this, of course, besides the fact they have the right attitude for your team. We refused people who aced the test because of this. hope this helps.
V.
A progressbar? How big was the file? Here's an even better idea. Provide a program 9along the same lines) that's already written, but is missing the critical method that changes the data's case, and ask the candidate to fill in the missing function. The test here is three-fold. 0) Can he correctly implement the function (illustrates coding skill) 1) Does his coding style fit in the existing code tyle of the application (indenting, variable names, that kind of thing) 2) Did he comment his code?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
Henry Minute wrote:
What are you going to do half way through, when you can't quite remember what we said, break off to log on to CP and get clarification?
:rolleyes: I tried that on my last date and it all went horribly wrong!
Ali
Alison P wrote:
:rolleyes: I tried that on my last date and it all went horribly wrong!
Which is why I gave you my mobile number and told you to call me if you forgot what to do.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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He went quiet and started looking worried when I told him I spent a lot of time in the Lounge with Rage, Dalek Dave, Slacker, Nagy, Mr Minute and an outlaw ... can't understand it myself. :confused:
Ali
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Now, if you were Peter[^], I'd have you onboard for the entertainment value alone.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
Regrettably, I'm not that animated...
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
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A progressbar? How big was the file? Here's an even better idea. Provide a program 9along the same lines) that's already written, but is missing the critical method that changes the data's case, and ask the candidate to fill in the missing function. The test here is three-fold. 0) Can he correctly implement the function (illustrates coding skill) 1) Does his coding style fit in the existing code tyle of the application (indenting, variable names, that kind of thing) 2) Did he comment his code?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
Alison P wrote:
:rolleyes: I tried that on my last date and it all went horribly wrong!
Which is why I gave you my mobile number and told you to call me if you forgot what to do.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
... and I did take your advice ... but apparently dancing on the table in your underwear in the middle of a Fine French Restaurant was not what he expected on a first date! :rolleyes: That's the last time I listen to you! ;)
Ali
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- Ginger or Marianne? 1) Boxers or briefs? 2) What is your opinion of the word "hyphenated"? 3) What's the difference between an orange? 4) If you were traveling on an un-marked circle with no visible landmarks, would you know a stopping point when you saw it? 5) If a man spoke in the forest, and there wasn't a woman around to hear him,, would he still be wrong? 6) If I punched you right now, what would you do? 7) Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? 8) If you were to die right now, would you rather be shot by an AR-15 or slashed with a machete? To add a sense of urgency to the question, lay both weapons on the table. 9) Bring a pretty secretary into the room, and say, "So, what do you think of Ms. Hardbody's butt?"
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997modified on Tuesday, September 6, 2011 7:43 AM
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
- If a man spoke in the forest, and there wasn't a woman around to hear him,, would he still be wrong?
:rolleyes: Yes, obviously!
Ali
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I have recently been promoted to a managing position in my company, and next week I'll have to conduct my first interview, which will be for a junior C#/.NET developer position. I would like to ask you guys what kind of questions you think are important to ask someone applying for this job, and the basic knowledges you think the candidates should have. Thanks in advance for your help.
For a junior role (assuming your company's scale is reasonably normal), the important thing is not knowledge (beyond a basic ability to actually write C# and know his way around the bits of the framework you need for a basic task, e.g. System, WinForms and/or WPF, IO, Collections/Collections.Generic ... I guess that's about it), but ability to learn, take advice and get on with your team. My company gives applicants a programming challenge (not something esoteric or with trick questions, just a simple console app), questions allowed, and asks them to give a presentation. That checks that they vaguely know what they're doing, that they can ask for help in a reasonable way if they need it, and makes sure that they can explain themselves. I think that is a good approach. It's important that you actually give them at least a short hands-on test, in my opinion, because otherwise the CV-enhancers will get in and then be a huge drain on resources as you realise (once they have the job and it's hard to get rid of them) that they actually don't know what they're doing like they said they did. As for what they should know, it should be enough to make a simple self-contained application. That means the main language features (not necessarily recent stuff like Linq, lambdas, anonymous delegates and the like) and bits of the Framework that you really must know (listed above). If it's for a web based role, at least a basic idea of how ASP.net works would be a good idea. The most important piece of knowledge though is how to find documentation for the bits you don't know (though C# is fairly easy for this, it gets the top of most Google hits if you just enter a class name). Ask them a few questions on simple stuff that they really should know, and then ask at least one that a junior guy probably won't know (for example, how would you data bind a List<SomeObject> to a data grid with only certain columns shown), and when he looks worried, say that you don't expect him to know but ask how he'd go about finding out.
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I have recently been promoted to a managing position in my company, and next week I'll have to conduct my first interview, which will be for a junior C#/.NET developer position. I would like to ask you guys what kind of questions you think are important to ask someone applying for this job, and the basic knowledges you think the candidates should have. Thanks in advance for your help.
Check for a propensity toward text speak. X|
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He went quiet and started looking worried when I told him I spent a lot of time in the Lounge with Rage, Dalek Dave, Slacker, Nagy, Mr Minute and an outlaw ... can't understand it myself. :confused:
Ali
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Maybe but Huffle has form.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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Dalek Dave wrote:
Not long enough ... sadly not nearly long enough!
There is a joke there ... but I am too much of a lady to do it! :-O
Ali
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Dalek Dave wrote:
Not long enough ... sadly not nearly long enough!
There is a joke there ... but I am too much of a lady to do it! :-O
Ali
Don't worry - he isn't!
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
-
Make sure the candidate walks the walk and does not only talk the talk. IOW give him a small assignment to work on. In our company this was creating a small form that reads in a txt file and shows it in a textbox. Each other character needed to be converted to uppercase. A progressbar and a label indicating how long the convertion took was mandatory. test duration was about 30 minutes (give them time to finish up) and we asked some questions afterwards like how could you speed up things. Do you know this and this object. Where would you look for info if i gave you this problem, etc... All this, of course, besides the fact they have the right attitude for your team. We refused people who aced the test because of this. hope this helps.
V.
V. wrote:
We refused people who aced the test because of this.
I sat for about 30 seconds wondering why you would refuse people just because they aced the test. Then I realized you refused people because of their attitude, despite the fact that they aced the test. :doh:
Martin Fowler wrote:
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
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For a junior role (assuming your company's scale is reasonably normal), the important thing is not knowledge (beyond a basic ability to actually write C# and know his way around the bits of the framework you need for a basic task, e.g. System, WinForms and/or WPF, IO, Collections/Collections.Generic ... I guess that's about it), but ability to learn, take advice and get on with your team. My company gives applicants a programming challenge (not something esoteric or with trick questions, just a simple console app), questions allowed, and asks them to give a presentation. That checks that they vaguely know what they're doing, that they can ask for help in a reasonable way if they need it, and makes sure that they can explain themselves. I think that is a good approach. It's important that you actually give them at least a short hands-on test, in my opinion, because otherwise the CV-enhancers will get in and then be a huge drain on resources as you realise (once they have the job and it's hard to get rid of them) that they actually don't know what they're doing like they said they did. As for what they should know, it should be enough to make a simple self-contained application. That means the main language features (not necessarily recent stuff like Linq, lambdas, anonymous delegates and the like) and bits of the Framework that you really must know (listed above). If it's for a web based role, at least a basic idea of how ASP.net works would be a good idea. The most important piece of knowledge though is how to find documentation for the bits you don't know (though C# is fairly easy for this, it gets the top of most Google hits if you just enter a class name). Ask them a few questions on simple stuff that they really should know, and then ask at least one that a junior guy probably won't know (for example, how would you data bind a List<SomeObject> to a data grid with only certain columns shown), and when he looks worried, say that you don't expect him to know but ask how he'd go about finding out.
BobJanova wrote:
ask how he'd go about finding out
"Google."
Martin Fowler wrote:
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
-
I have recently been promoted to a managing position in my company, and next week I'll have to conduct my first interview, which will be for a junior C#/.NET developer position. I would like to ask you guys what kind of questions you think are important to ask someone applying for this job, and the basic knowledges you think the candidates should have. Thanks in advance for your help.
Will he take your low ball offer. :doh:
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