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What questions do you ask to progammers when interviewing them?

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Mar 10.2012

Hi

So I was a little curious that as a technical interviewer, what kind of questions do you ask the candidates before hiring them?

Personally I don’t judge someone by asking them quiz type questions. I rather ask them questions related to real life scenario. For example, if ask them to design a database for a simple email client.

Please share your thoughts / opinions.

Thanks

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PHP

9 Comments(s) ↴

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@steave1987Mar 10.2012 — Yeah I also want to give interview in company and I have no idea about interview, so waiting for the posts.
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@mayson_ratMar 10.2012 — Here's one of the most common question in a interview

  • 1. Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?

  • 2. Why do you think you fit for these job?

  • 3. Situation set up by the interviewer
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    @phantom007authorMar 10.2012 — Here's one of the most common question in a interview

  • 1. Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?

  • 2. Why do you think you fit for these job?

  • 3. Situation set up by the interviewer
    • [/QUOTE]

    Thanks for replying but none of these are technical questions.
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    @spufiMar 10.2012 — Ask them about things like design patterns, MVC, and how they structure their files. How much of their code is done using classes. What are all of the ways they know how to secure their code. How much experience do they have with documenting their work, ie phpDocumentor from PEAR. Do they have experience working with something that generates versions of code so in case they need to go back to older code they can. Have they worked with tools that use a check out system so that way you don't get two or more people working on the same file at the same time.

    I fully expect somebody who is at the interview stage to know the basics. What I want to know is how much do they know about the intermediate and advanced stuff. Even if they fail badly at this part, it can be used more to gauge what they need to be taught versus if you hire them or not. It just depends on what they are lacking in. Lacking in version control or a check out system is ok. Lacking in use of classes, design patterns, MVC, security outside of SQL injections is a bad thing.
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    @NogDogMar 10.2012 — Not necessarily a deal-breaker, but perhaps a tie-breaker, would be to ask a candidate about traits in PHP. Since traits are new to the just released 5.4.0, such a question would be a good way to find out how interested they are in the language and if they keep up on its latest developments.
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    @phantom007authorMar 10.2012 — Not necessarily a deal-breaker, but perhaps a tie-breaker, would be to ask a candidate about traits in PHP. Since traits are new to the just released 5.4.0, such a question would be a good way to find out how interested they are in the language and if they keep up on its latest developments.[/QUOTE]

    Its very unlikely everyone would be knowing about traits. And even they dont know about it that does not mean they are bad at other things.

    I'm actually looking for some interesting questions that contains some decent logic..for example, asking a candidate to troubleshoot an issue that I might have encountered during my work.
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    @hastxMar 12.2012 — Honestly, I test all candidates on the fly to see if they follow instructions. Give them a computer with a simple IDE like Geany and an install of abyss or other small web server and tell them you want a class that contains at least 2 methods and provides a calculation of some sort...nothing difficult by any means...just enough to show a level of experience.

    Then ask questions of a specific nature..."what difficulties do find in outputting javascript from PHP?" ...of course there is no all-inclusive answer but if someone says they have never encountered that....

    I have found that setting up real-world tests is the best candidate selection tool. Believe me, you would be surprised how many people interview very well and dont know basic things. I interviewed a candidate alledgedly with a lot of experience the stated the localhost address was 128.0.0.1...actually hand-wrote that on paper and when questioned about the answer stood by it with conviction.

    I also take any resume with relevant certifications and put them to the top...it saves me A LOT of work. someone with a RedHat cert or CIW, etc is going to have a verifiable level of knowledge in certain areas. Depending on the platforms you program on, an MS cert might carry a level of knowlege on that platform whereas if you are programming on *nix it would be beneficial to have a programmer familiar with the the OS and web server platform.
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    @badbenMar 13.2012 — I would give them an example of a badly designed/insecure script or simple application and ask them to suggest improvements for the code.

    This tells you how good they are at reading code, how well they understand the necessary requirements for security etc.
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    @ZeratulsDomainMar 13.2012 — Very interesting thread. I like the idea of giving them bad code and asking them about it. Simple 15 lines of code or so can have many errors and can be a quick & easy task to give in an interview.

    Asking them to write a basic class is also a good idea. Maybe throw is some simple polymorphism task. That is another task that can be done in under 5 minutes and would quickly highlight obvious issues.
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