Art of Interview

In a recent discussion with one of senior architect, he shared few tips to smartly identifying candidates skills.

• Instead of asking question of Design Patterns discussions around principles of patterns will show the candidates understanding on design.  For example Interface uses inversions of principles.
• Instead of asking questions on particular architecture, discussion on the candidates experience with different architectural patterns.  Get his experience on his experience with architectural patterns. He can talk about moments he compromised or committed the rules of architecture, which will help to understand the candidates exposure.  For example if the architecture is MVVM implementing simple Popup will needs more code.
• Simple check on latest language feature which he get implemented in his current project will show his passion around technology and getting implementing in the projects.
• Asking simple list to tools the candidate uses frequently will help to judge the kind of day to day work he does
• Start the  discussion around generic title like Build automation and get thoughts on what are different level of build automation possible and challenges.  Which will help to judge the broad spectrum of thinking and influencing capabilities.  or topic like ORM will be good for this.

The discussion revealed me that an interview can be just a conversion and knowledge sharing kind of session.