More Good Interview Questions
I was reading Good Interview Questions. I was a bit surprised by the first question:
State, Strategy, Bridge, and Adapter are all similar patterns. How are they similar, and how are they different?
But I suspect I was surprised because I’m no longer a developer and am not familiar with the patterns. I suspect I would keep a paper copy of the patterns and ask a candidate to read them first if the candidate was unfamiliar with the patterns. I don’t want to make a test out of attempting to remember the pattern; I want to hear the candidate’s perspective on the patterns.I loved the second question:
What makes good, maintainable code?
What an opportunity to ask followup questions such as “When have you not written maintainable code? Why?”I like meta questions, such as the third one:
What questions should we be asking you?
I’m not sure I would ask every candidate how to improve the interview, but meta questions are more illuminating (for me) than hypothetical questions if I want to understand how the candidate thinks.
3 comments May 16th, 2005