swombat.com

daily articles for founders

Running a startup in the UK (or with a UK subsidiary)? Get in touch with my company, GrantTree. We help with government funding.
How to interview developers  

This is the method I've been applying for some time now (not at a large scale, but quite reliably):

So what should a developer job interview look like then? Simple: eliminate the exam part of the interview altogether. Instead, ask a few open-ended questions that invite your candidates to elaborate about their programming work.

  • What's the last project you worked on at your former employer?
  • Tell me about some of your favorite projects.
  • What projects are you working on in your spare time?
  • What online hacker communities do you participate in?
  • Tell me about some (programming/technical) issues that you feel passionately about.

Basically, have a relaxed, friendly chat, and tease out whether they're a bright, passionate geek, or not.

Worth noting that this method is, in my opinion, only applicable by people who are themselves developers. If you're completely non-technical, you'll struggle to tell apart a good bullshitter from a geek. Whereas as a geek, it's very easy to do. Any chat about past side projects will involve numerous statements that only a geek can get consistently right - and one slip-up is enough to discredit someone, in this game (for example, "Yeah, I built this 3D engine in C++, it was pretty cool. It ran in the browser." would need some very good follow-up to be convincing, and a flake would not be able to come up with it).

More from the library:
Don't let me know how I can help
Traffic sources have a half-life
People, processes and tools