First time as interviewer on weds

[Mort]

Hey all

Holding interviews for members to support our web team this week, and wondered if anyone had any tips from also being the interviewer / going to a particulary good interview where the person seeing you made you feel relaxed and laid back.

Also any good things to ask a potential new web dev, I have a list of things but dont want to put it up yet as want to see what you all come up with

Will be mostly HTML / CSS / PHP / MySQL, so was going to also get them to code a fairly basic page to our specs by hand (no reference), plus give them some code to debug, the usual really.

Thanks in advance

 

[Mort]

lol nice, the guy was a no show

we gave him a call and he canceled the call, not very polite! so if anyone knows a J.W. from MK, providing he hasnt been envolved in some accident or other, then give him a slap

 

[Mort]

to be honest probably watch him do it, i had that happen to me in my first ever interview after I graduated. it was ok as the guy made me feel pretty calm and gave of a very relaxed and friendly vibe so it was cool

and i like to think i am a pretty easy going chap

and making them code it by hand rather than the copy / paste method (which even I use at times), shows they have HTML tags etched into their brain lol. you should always remember syntax for simple tags like images and forms etc, doesnt take much effort to remember how things should be done, and trust me I am king of lazy

 

[Mort]

Indeed. Quite unprofessional.

And there was me thinking it was quite unprofessional not to show up in the first place. If he doesnt want to be named and shamed then at least a courtesy call saying he will not be attending would have sufficed.

If you were holding interviews for another job vacancy and saw this, and he had applied, wouldnt you think twice about employing him? As not showing, and then canceling the call when we ring him is just rude in my opinion! Wasted a good few hours of my day while other work is piling up.

A good interview question that I got was "Tell me the difference between HTML and XHTML"

Anyways back on topic. Hamish, very good question, thanks!

 

[Mort]

Make sure that you know the answer to that though first! ;o)

Well duh hehe

Yes, it is quite unprofessional of him to not show up, but it was even more unprofessional of you to post his name and the town he lives in on the net - being the lamer I am, I now have access to directions to his house. And also, 2 wrongs don't make a right.

Ok fair enough, point taken, name removed. But it wasnt my intention to attract potential stalkers to him Some part of me was worried which is why I said about him maybe having an accident, and maybe someone may have known him, but yeah the most part was just me being pi**ed off at having my time wasted, as I am sure many of you would agree is not cool

 

[Mort]

As i said I was stressed out at having the interview in the first place, then even more stressed that it was all a waste of time, didnt mean to do anything malicious or offend anyone etc.

Like boycee's idea of the truth test to see if they are honest about not knowing. also was thinking about one of the debugging tests, write a perfect piece of code that validates 100% etc and see if they spot that there are zero mistakes instead of just making stuff up? Or is that too mean?

And you say "him" bitterSTAR, my next two interviews are both female devs!

 

[Mort]

First interview went fine, we decided to keep all the techie stuff / coding tests until the 2nd interview though.

But she was pretty good, especially for a graduate, had a few very impressive self projects as well. Think she finished with a first at uni too, and she was really keen, and seemed like she really enjoyed to code which I can totally relate too

Think we had even less females on my course at uni, but I guess from a womans point of view thats even more reason to be top (or near) of the class!