Tom Mercaldo, the president of Aquinas Consulting, was recently interviewed for an article that gave insight into software developer interview questions. He gave examples of some of the questions commonly used by Aquinas Consulting recruiters and what the answers to these questions reveal about the candidate.
Mercaldo was cited saying, “When asking interview questions I try to ask questions that get a developer to get into details on what they have down with technology. Generic technology questions tend to be less insightful. But here are some of the questions myself and the members of my team use:
Do you primarily consider yourself a front end or back end developer?
This is kind of a trick question to see if someone feels confident on both front and back end tasks. It gets the person to talk about where they are most comfortable.
Give me an example of a difficult issue you had identifying or fixing code that did not work and how you went about resolving the problem.
Debugging skills and problem solving skills are one of the keys to being a successful developer. Most interviewers focus on language skills rather than this important aspect of the job.
What qualities in your work approach do you feel make you more effective than another developer?
Some developers can work at warp speed. They develop techniques to do this. They are the best developers. I want to understand if the developer can work fast and what things they do to make them faster / better than their peers.
Are you responsible for any of the architecture and design work or is your focus primarily on coding and development?
Want to assess where they are in their career and what they are capable of.
Tell me more about your Development background (Including Projects and Technologies)?
Open ended question to get to know a candidate.
What are your strengths? What will you do if you are asked to work in an area that you have never worked before by the manager?
Open ended question to get to know a candidate.
What do you feel are the most important thing to look for when reviewing another team member’s code?
If they don’t understand this, they don’t know what’s important to include in their own code.
What kind of tools / languages do you develop in? Which is your favourite & why?
Just to get a sense for what they know.
What types of applications have you built?
Access functional knowledge.
What steps do you take to get unstuck when dealing with a really difficult problem/design/bug?
Access problem solving.”
If you are a software developer looking for new opportunities, please visit our job search or upload your resume!