Under the influence of the remarkable development in the IT industry, enterprises are in need of IT talents more than ever. To have a short-listed candidate is hard enough, let alone to hit spot on with the “knock-out” interview questions, you can apply this checklist for the complete developer interview questions.

This checklist takes things in two different approaches. One is from the technical point of view and the other is from the strategic point of view. While the technical aspect needs reviewing from a technical officer, the strategic one should be in the hand of the CTO.

 

What recruiters should prepare before any interview

Before rushing into any lengthy recruitment process, several things should be put into consideration to create proper IT recruitment strategies:

• The ideal candidate profile: For any job openings on the IT market, besides the developer interview questions, the very first thing to do should be the clarification on what you need for your project. The job description should indicate the programming language needed, frameworks, tools, experience, etc.
• The candidates’ preference: You should also skimming the candidates’ preference in terms of work location, work benefits, salary to see if they can onboard once they’re hired. Some might even reject a job offer if the work location is too far from their residences.
• The shared objectives between the employer and the employee: This is a strategic question that both the recruiter and the candidate need to answer. For the best of both parties, the career path and career development should be clarified so that they can understand each other.

Also read: How to hire Test Automation Engineer

Four developer interview questions to test your candidates’ technical skills

It is never easy to stay ahead of the curve, especially when working in the IT industry. JavaScript, Java, C# and Python are currently the most popular programming languages in this tech world. But besides these, there are plenty more; each is suitable for different purposes and different kinds of applications.

 

Among the IT talents in the industry, each has different skills, and it is such a puzzle for enterprises to find the candidates with the right skill sets for their projects, prompting the biggest challenge for the HR department when recruiting.

To identify the suitable candidates for your projects, you need to explore their experience and potential step by step, and perhaps this guide can help you out.

 

Dive into their portfolios for insights of what they have achieved and their experience in the field.

As there are no one-size-fits-all programmer portfolios, you have to dig deep into what is included in their portfolios to grasp the idea of how your candidates work in their job. In these CVs, they should note out their objectives and expected career goals, as well as their projects in the past. These should cover the foundation knowledge about the candidates, and the recruiter can elaborate from there.

 

You should be well aware that programmer portfolios can come in all shapes and sizes, including a pool of their work’s information. When asking about this, four things should be carefully considered, including:

• An overall introduction of this project with domain information, time frame, team size, target customers.
• The candidate’s responsibilities in this project. The responsibilities can be categorized as front-end, back-end and full-stack.
• The technology stack of the project
• The programming language(s) required

Remember that this kind of information is just to build the get-to-know your candidates, but not the deciding factor for you to know whether you should hire them. Instead, it is recommended that the recruiter test their capabilities directly and look through the actual products of their previous work.

Before the face-to-face interaction, the candidate’s portfolios serve as a basis for understanding and it could help you build the bespoke questions to use during the recruitment process.

 

Take a look at their GitHub account

GitHub is perhaps the most popular “playground” for developers to showcase their work and skills. With open-source projects on GitHub, either developed by the candidates themselves or by others, it also shows their ability to:

• Write comprehensive and easy to understand codes for others to contribute to
• Understand others’ work and maintain code
• Collaborate with others to deliver a better product

 

This process should be done with the help of a tech team or technical senior under the recruiter’s assessment. Regarding the GitHub repository, you should check:

• The number of followers. This number shows the reputation of the candidates and the appreciation they receive from the community.
• Their time on GitHub. This shows their experience in the industry.
• The number of their repositories shows the projects they worked on.

 

Set up a live coding interview

The most direct way to assess a candidate’s ability to think, code and present their approach is through a mini coding test.

These live programming tests can give you the fullest understanding of the candidate’s logical thinking and their tendency to solve a problem. From this, you can figure out their approach, especially when they have to work under pressure.

Some candidates may not agree to take a test, but it also shows their attitude towards challenges once they do. The attitude is another characteristic needed for any forward-thinking employee, which may benefit your company to some extent.

 

Set up a programming test

For an objective and efficient assessment, recruiters should pose the candidates with actual problems and actual bugs (the one they already have known where the glitches are). With practical answers in practical scenarios, the candidates can show their full potential in problem-solving and technical skills. This test should be devised based on the programming language needed in the job and the experience mentioned in their portfolios. This can be considered another layer of authentication for their capabilities.

After the candidates have finished their tests, they should be automatically analyzed according to performance metrics. These metrics can be:

• Code Design
• Programming Language competency
• Maintainability
• Solidity

Interview questions to assess the developer candidate’s cultural fit

As for the personal and culture fit aspects, the questions vary depending on specific situations. Here are commonly-asked questions for tech recruiters to refer to:

• Why would you want to work for the company?
• What do you expect from this position?
• Where do you see yourself in 3 – 5 years?
• How do you describe a healthy working environment?
• What management styles motivating you at work the most?

 

Quite a list for developer interview questions, right? If you’re struggling in finding suitable candidates for your company, why don’t you let us help? Contact us for a thorough consultation of IT Talent recruitment.

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