Episode 16: Interviewing Software Developers

Posted by admin
Posted in discussion

This week Kevin leads a discussion on interviewing software developers:

What interview styles we find effective
What sort of questions actually help us evaluate a candidate
Why API trivia and puzzle questions don’t work
Hiring mistakes we’ve made based on errors in our interview style
Why we don’t do very well when the tables are turned and it’s our turn to be interviewed

Download / Listen

Herding Code 16: Interviewing Software Developers

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sep 04

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 5:25 pmand is filed under discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Comments Episode 16: Interviewing Software Developers

jason

September 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am

Nice Blade Runner ref, I’ve always wanted to pull that in an interview.
Chris Bilson

September 17th, 2008 at 7:49 am

I liked the blade runner reference too. I am totally going to do that the next time I am interviewing someone.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot is how the purpose of certification in the IT industry is seen as qualifying job applicants. I am currently studying for a really hard certification in another industry and I can say that the primary purpose is definately not qualification: it’s designed to help the applicant learn stuff. The study materials aren’t designed to help you get over a bar but to help you know what you are doing.

This leaves me wondering why the IT industry doesn’t have certification programs like this. Maybe it’s because most of the certifications in IT are from vendors. Not sure but this is definitely an interesting topic.

Anyway, thanks for the great discussion!