thoughts.on.code

Before today I had never interviewed someone else. It was odd to be on the other side of the table, knowing that what you think of the person could stand in the way of their career. It also doesn’t help that I have only been with the company for 2 weeks. It kinda shocked me that they would even want my opinion this early in my employment with them.

Unfortunately, communications got mixed up and in the end I only got 10 minutes with the guy. I wish I had a little more time, but was not really prepared for it in the first place. Lesson learned: always keep an eye out for good questions to ask a candidate. I was not prepared because I had never thought about it before. If I had, then it would have been much easier. So, anyone got a good arsenal of interview questions to throw my way?

I keep trying to think of questions that have been asked of me, but they all boil down to questions like “What patterns have you used?”. That is a decent open ended question, that allows for great follow up questions, like “So, you have used the Adaptor pattern… could you describe the scenario, and why did you choose this pattern versus any others?” But, I’m also looking for more pointed questions, such as “What are the bounds of an int in Java, C, and Blorax?” (I made that last one up, at least I think I did).