LTS QA

 

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.

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

 

Yes, the IT industry is more vigorous than ever, and yes, the outlook for this industry to thrive in the years coming is undeniable. As a result, a talent management program is more important than ever for businesses to attract, attain and develop talents.

While it has come to the universal recognition that the “lifeblood” of this whole sector lies upon the IT talents – the ones that can bring simple code lines into complex systems, the statistics predict quite a “gloomy” future regarding the HR field. By 2026, the US market will see a shortage of 1.2M talents, and it is becoming more and more difficult to fill any IT positions.

 

1. What Your Future Employees Want Most

The world has witnessed a soaring number of job openings with more than 7 million positions to be filled. Yet, enterprises are still struggling to find high-profile candidates for their operations. Plus, qualified candidates now reap the advantages of being favored, hence the enterprises wanting to recruit them have to reconsider how they attract, retain and manage their talents.

It is undeniable that the competition in HR is growing day by day, with the enterprises boost their recruitment campaigns with skyrocketing costs. Besides marketing and branding to bring the most likable image to the candidates, these high-profile talents are seeking:

• Flexibility in their work
• Value over Volume
• Team diversity

 

Flexible options

According to a study regarding the Future of Talent Management, 88% of the knowledge workers say that they would prioritize flexibility in terms of working hours and location when it comes to finding a new job. Soon, IT candidates expect that the recruiters would go for a wider range of searches, even cross-region or cross-border.

 

In contrast to the past, IT workers now have a diverse choice of where they can work, either remotely or onsite. They also put an emphasis on how they can balance out their work life and personal interests. You can also understand this as they are willing to move out of the suburban areas if they can work remotely.

In order to stay close to your most potential candidates, enterprises are advised to build the foundation near them or create the opportunity for them to work remotely. With the advance of technology, online communication is not a challenge anymore.

 

Value over Volume

As the workforce for the IT industry is getting younger and younger, their perspective towards how their productivity is measured. The traditional metrics often focus on the volume of the work they can deliver, and this is now deemed the outdated way of productivity measurement. Instead, today’s employees want to be assessed based on the overall value that they can bring to the enterprises, rather than the same old qualified outputs.

With this “philosophy” implemented in their jobs, they will have more space and trust to do their best. Of course, from the employers’ point of view, they want to go the traditional way to ensure the outputs for the whole system.

For forward-thinking companies that want to have a new approach for talent management, creating a workplace of people-centric experiences will give the employees the freedom to discover and strengthen their creativity.

 

Team diversity

The importance of a company’s culture is gaining its reputation in recent years, and one of the key features is team diversity. According to the survey, 86% of IT employees and 66% of Hr directors indicated that a diverse workforce would be even more critical. This diversity can help the team cope with the ever-demanding requirements of skills and roles.

The diversity we want to mention here is the diversity of background and technical knowledge. A team of members from different backgrounds can work together to create the best values for their company.

 

2. Facts and Figures about IT recruitment you don’t want to miss

We compiled multiple surveys to deliver you an overview of what’s happening in the IT recruitment sector. These surveys involve HR professionals and IT talents. We highlighted the most outstanding features for you to have the overall picture regarding IT talent management:

• Technical priorities
• Competition between hiring companies
• Favored platforms for finding jobs
• Likes and Dislikes

 

Technical priorities

Besides the priorities mentioned above regarding work culture and work location, software developers are still looking for the same things in job opportunities, especially the technical challenges. To the IT talents in the industry, Technical challenges/interesting tasks reign the most important features when it comes to choosing a new job. With the opportunity to be in one-of-the-kind experience, IT talents can find the motivation to work in that job. Trivial and day-to-day functions are the unfavored things.

Of course, salary is another important factor, but it only comes in third place, right after the flexible working hours and balanced lifestyle.

 

From the employers’ point of view, the most in-demand programming languages are JavaScript, Java, C# and Python. As the IT industry is booming, the needs for responsive, interactive websites are higher than ever, and JavaScript, with its object-oriented programming features, has become the most popular language in the industry.

There is a slight difference in what programming languages that candidates are capable of and what languages are favored by HR recruiters. For example, as most of the candidates asked know how to code in C and Bash, only a few of the recruiters want to hire someone with these programming languages.

JavaScript, Java, C# and Python are in the top 4 for both programmers and recruiters.

There are, however, some inconsistencies. For example, although ObjectiveC is one of the top 10 most sought-after languages, only 0.5% of developers said they actually liked the language.

Java and JavaScript receive controversial opinions on whether they are the most loved or hated programming languages. However, most of them agree that PHP is the most dreaded one. For the recruiters, 40% said they were looking for IT talents proficient with PHP.

ObjectiveC is also among the most sought-after programming languages, but the number of IT candidates with this skill is lacking.

 

Competition between hiring companies

The number of technology companies is spiking, with tech positions to be filled reaching the highest number ever. Under this circumstance, the recruiting department of one company faces a big challenge of finding qualified candidates while having to compete with many other businesses.

With human resources as the bloodline of the operation, many enterprises have raised the budget for recruitment, e.g., branding and recruiting platform. On the one hand, this has opened more doors for IT talents to reach more job openings. On the other hand, it makes it more competitive for recruiters to impress candidates. It also requires the enterprise to have a strategic talent management program to attain talents more effectively.

 

Favored platforms for finding jobs

78.3% of the developers said that they would go for LinkedIn for job opportunities. How the platform connects recruiters and candidates makes it easier for them to communicate. Transparency regarding the job descriptions and salary range also plays a key factor for candidates to choose a platform, and LinkedIn seems to have it all.

Despite all that, LinkedIn is not the only platform for recruiters. They can turn to networking events or job listings websites for candidate data. Tech-oriented, niche platforms take up a small percentile of the market, but high-profile candidates are likely to be listed on these platforms.

 

Dislikes

In general, irrelevance is the problem that both recruiters and IT talents face every day. While the candidates indicated that the irrelevance in the job offers and technical questions make them feel uncomfortable with the recruiters, talent recruiters also thought that they are not receiving enough relevant applications and CVs. Most of them are underqualified and not even close to the expected level.

 

Recruitment is never an easy task. If you need help with this, contact us for consultation:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance