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After twenty plus years of working in information technology, I have given, and been given, more than my share of technical interviews. Often being the person who would give prompt and detailed feedback to a recruiter has lead to many of the extra interviews. While I do not have an exact count, I have easily been on the question-asking side of over 200 technical interviews.
I used to ask a lot of questions focusing on "technical trivia". These types of questions center on a candidate's knowledge about variable types, how they allocate memory or some other very technical aspect. Yes, a technical interview is supposed to uncover a candidate's technical skill level, but there are many ways to achieve things. Just because you done things a certain way or read a few books about how to do things, this does not make it the only way to solve a problem. Too many times I have seen an interviewer tell me a candidate was not very good, when I thought they were. The difference often has come down to "they did not do things the way I do them".
While we need to asses they can handle the workload, being able to come up with the answer to a lot of "technical trivia" questions does not always make for a quality team addition. I have hired candidates that could answer my every technical question and had the certifications to go along with it. Some of these same people wound up being the worst team members I ever had. Technical competence is one thing, but knowing how to apply it is entirely something else. At the end of the day, solving business problems is what we do. Technology is a means to do it.
My technical interviews now not only assess if they are technically competent, but can they translate that into solving business problems and base it on the experience of the candidate. Here are my top five questions I ask in every technical interview. I elaborate on why I ask them.
Pick a recent project and tell me the business case behind it?
Every project has a business story behind it.
"We needed to provide more accurate reporting to OSHA because we had a bad rating last year/"
"The SEC could fine us $ 100K a day if we do not supply them data within five days of asking for it"
If you cannot tell me about the business story behind it, you will never be able to understand how what you have done fits into the grand scheme of things. If you cannot understand that, you will not understand why it is bad for the user to have to click three more times than they have to on a screen or some other bad thing.
Technical people who cannot see past what they are doing become dangerous team members and jeopardize project success.
What was your role in the project?
Were you the technical architect of the whole solution of were you implementing someone else's vision? Not every person on every project comes up with the technical plan on what to do. Often people are just the minions and do what they are told. Also people fall into roles. Someone has to be the one interfacing with QA more than others. Someone has to talk with the end-user representative more than others. There could be hundreds or roles. What was theirs?
Were you a decision maker in the technical architecture or did you implement what had already been decided and explain the technical architecture?
This is the question that leads in to the technical part. Whether they designed everything themselves or someone else did, they still should be able to understand it. Most technical work is a compilation of "black boxes". A black box symbolizes a piece of technology that takes some input, "makes magic happen" and provides output. As technology workers, we create the "black boxes". We also still use black boxes ourselves. I do not know exactly how .NET compiles out to IL. The only ones who really get it are the buys who wrote the code it to do it to begin with.
With all this in mind, the technical architecture is the "black box". I want to know how much time they spent understanding it. If they were the technical architect, I want them to be able to explain what they did and why they did it that way.
Every project has some basic design patterns the technical architecture should address. Examples include:
• How to retrieve connections strings
• Data concurrency
• Type of object to pass data between tiers
These are great questions for the candidate to explain how things were done. Someone who can explain it well starts being a good candidate. This is a great time to sprinkle in many of the "technical trivia" questions (what objects could you have used to pass data between the tiers?).
What would you do differently with the technical architecture?
You better have something here. I have never been on a project where I can say "Would not change a thing." Then again, I never have started a project with full and exhaustive information. There is always something missing, not thought through completely or deadlines forced me to go with what we had.
This question shows whether or not the candidate is interested in continuously improving their work product.
What level of process did you have on the project?
Some people come from IT departments that are completely ad-hoc and nothing is ever written down. The other end of the spectrum where some people have only worked in CMM Level 5 environments.
Just know what they are and compare it to your environment. If you are a CMM Level 5 shop, people you hire need experience in process before they can be successful. Likewise if the candidate is used to a certain level of process and your department leans towards ad-hoc, do yourself and the candidate a favor and move on.
Technical competence is a must. Technical trivia is nothing more than trivia. A good and contributing team member knows how to solve business problems and uses the technology to do so. The technology is a means to, but not the end.