As an interviewer it’s not that easy to prepare an interview that really evaluates the applicant, be sure that the applicant did the following before attending the interview:
- Searched for interview questions in the topic related to the job post
- Asked and searched for the interview questions of the company
- Attending a lot of interviews and getting the experience of answering the model answer
So having a predefined set of questions will not be a good approach to evaluate the applicant. My advice is to do the following
- Start by asking about the previous projects interrupt the applicant by asking about the challenging parts in each project, and how these parts have been resolved, also it’s important to know the role of the applicant in the project because in many cases the project is a result of a teamwork effort
- From the applicant’s previous projects ask questions Try to ask technical questions related to the approaches used in these projects, best practices and design patterns. Also, you can ask about the libraries used in the projects, how it was integrated into the project and if you know some conflicts in some libraries it will be nice to know these conflicts have been resolved
- Ask questions from your real projects Having a real cases from your projects is a good option to get questions, because this style of questions will not be popular on the interviewing questions websites or articles 😉 Try to link the business case with the technical solution to know how the applicant thinks about the problem and how to get the solution
- Avoid the “define bla bla bla” questions The style of “define”, “What the difference”, “how to use” questions are like giving a gift to the applicant, because this type of questions will not evaluate his technical skills, it will just test his memory 😊
- Use a coding challenge task Even of all the above questions you will not be able to evaluate the codding skills of the applicant, so it’s very important to have a coding challenge task after the interview, or before the interview depending on your internal process, visit Top Coding Challenge Websites of 2019 for the latest list
The conclusion is: try to be innovative, random and in your questions
Original post 5 Tips for a Powerful Technical Interview
Oldest comments (1)
When I was a CTO one of the most useful things I found out to ask was the why of a technical decision on a project the applicant was involved or if she/he have provided a GitHub repo with personal projects.