An Effective Software Developer Interview - Finding The Right Person For The Job

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An Effective Software Developer Interview - Finding The Right Person For The Job
By Aaron Davis

Aaron Davis
Level: Platinum
Aaron Davis is a Sr. Software Developer. He has been a web/application developer for more than 12 years. His specialty is .NET development …

If you want to keep your interview process simple but effective, you need to take a look at these steps before conducting your next candidate interview. Enjoy!

1. Call the candidate prior to setting up an interview. Keep the conversation non-technical! Get a feel for their personality and attitude. If you don’t feel good about those two things there is no reason to move on with the process.

2. Have a face-to-face non-technical interview. Get your existing team members involved in this one. See how everyone interacts with this candidate. Be sure there are no technical questions asked. Discussions on technology is fine. If your existing team doesn’t mesh with this person there is no reason to move on. There is one thing to keep in mind here. Be sure that you involve team members that you value and know are comitted the product you are developing. EVERY team has one or two people that are usually on their way out the door in one way or another so don’t sabotage the candidate by involving those people.

3. Get your 3 best developers and have them put together a very small database and a data access class (like the one described in this post - http://www.keepitsimpleprojects.com/viewtopic.php?t=14 ). Be sure that any environment specific configurations are set (e.g. connection string, etc.) Have them put together a very basic set of requirements for an application (e.g. the application should allow the user to create a paragraph of text and save it for retrieval at a later time. The total number of characters in the paragraph cannot exceed 1000.). If the job requires a specific skill, be sure it is included in some way.

4. Bring the candidate in for the technical interview. No need to get the team involved in this one. Have a quiet space set up for the candidate and ask them to develop an application based on the requirements (in step 3). Be sure that there is already a solution open in Visual Studio containing the data access class and any other code your team has decided to provide. Make sure they have full access to the internet. LET THEM DO THIS ALONE. DON’T STAND OVER THEIR SHOULDER!

5. Have your team review the code and provide feedback. Your decision should be very easy at this point.

This process will eliminate people that are not a fit for your team and it will also give you a very clear picture of the candidate’s skill level, resourcefulness, and experience.

Aaron Davis is a Sr. Software Developer. He has been a web/application developer for more than 12 years. His specialty is .NET development with C# and SQL Server.

http://www.keepitsimpleprojects.com

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