What questions to ask at a job interview for a candidate in an IT company

Conducting a competent interview for a position in an IT company is not an easy task. The employer must determine in a limited period of time whether the candidate is really the person the company wants to see in the vacant position. For this purpose, various interview common and general questions are asked. And these popular basic IT questions have the following purposes:

• Check the candidate to see if he meets the requirements.
• Find out if he can get out of difficult situations and show wit.
• Test his skills and knowledge.
• Assess the candidate’s ability to work in a team (a key skill for most positions).
• Learn more about the candidate’s personal qualities. The most important personal qualities for IT specialists are: determination, diligence, stress resistance, responsibility, ability to learn, critical thinking.

But not all employers know and understand what questions to ask at a job interview. Due to this, it often happens that a person who perfectly passes the interview and seems to be an ideal candidate for a vacant IT position does not really cope with his duties and serves as a ballast for the company in reality. To avoid this, let’s try to understand what to ask at the interview. Let’s look at a few of the most effective approaches to conducting a job interview for the best IT developer.

Examples of frequently asked questions at a job interview in IT

Here are some classic questions at job interview that are asked in top IT companies when hiring:

1. What projects have you worked on before, and who/what did you develop the product for? A person who has actually worked on a project will be able to tell you everything about it. In particular, he will clearly understand the purposes for which the product was developed.
2. What role did you fulfill in the team, and how important was it? This question allows you to find out how the candidate positions himself when working in a team, and how he evaluates his own abilities.
3. What exactly did you do in your last job? The resume often indicates the project on which the person worked. But he is the only one who will be able to explain the scope, the work performed. For example, he could write the architecture of the site or do the entire back-end, or he could just draw About dialog.
4. Did you do the evaluation of the final product (did you have to be a reviewer)? If not, that’s an indicator of not the highest level of trust from a former employer.
5. Have you had to finish a project on a rush basis, and how do you view a crazy deadline? Deadlines happen all the time in a programmer’s work, and real professionals should not complain about it. If a person is able to pull himself together at the right moment and work 14 hours a day to finish an urgent project, it shows him as a good and responsible specialist.
6. Opinion about a particular stage in the development process? Listen to how intelligently and correctly the candidate answers this question. If he constantly complains and says that he was not satisfied with everything, it is a reason to think about his competence.
7. What do you usually do when you realize you don’t have time to finish a product? You can tell how much of a team player the candidate is by the answer to this question.
8. Why did you leave your last job and how do you evaluate your contribution at that job? The reason for leaving a previous job speaks volumes. For example, if a person wants to develop further and take on new challenges, that is certainly a good sign. If he was not satisfied with the team or superiors, it often indicates problems with communication skills.
9. Ask yourself questions that you are interested in about the process of working at our company. The employer’s interview IT questions are often pretty standard, so it’s always interesting to hear what the candidate himself will learn. If he is really interested in the job, he will start asking about everything: what kind of team, tasks, how the development process is built, etc.

You should also consider a number of professional interview questions for job interview that will demonstrate the level of competence of the specialist. Such questions should be thought out based on the specifics of work in the office. For example, a candidate could be asked: “What is TDD and BDD?”. And also find out what he thinks about these different concepts.

It should be understood that there is an example of possible basic job interview questions above, but they can vary, depending on the main technology stack, the specifics of the project, and the tasks that the specialist will have to solve. This is especially relevant if the specialist will have to perform specific, yet demanding tasks.

Ask trick questions or tasks to candidates at the interview

Interview questions are often repeated in different companies, so many candidates prepare for them in advance. To really test the candidate, come up with some unusual logic or wit tasks. It is desirable that this task has something (even if indirectly) to do with the work. This will help you understand how much this person meets your expectations and how well he fits the stack of technologies used in the project.

You can also ask the candidate to solve a technical test. For example, ask him to write some simple code and see how he does it. In many cases, it is enough to see how a person uses hotkeys to get an idea of his level and experience. Alternatively, you can give tasks using a whiteboard and see how the person handles the task. Through the simplest whiteboard task, you can learn a lot about a candidate:

• How good he is at listening, memorizing and understanding tasks correctly;
• How he finds a solution;
• Demonstration of the work cycle;
• The ability to see an error and make corrections;
• Lack of fear of asking a clarifying question.

What answers in a job interview should make an employer wary

The questions asked in a job interview, and the candidate’s answers, allow you to learn a lot. But you also need to be able to interpret these answers correctly. First of all, the employer should be wary of candidates who complain a lot about former colleagues and superiors. It is also worth taking a closer look at those who ask a lot of questions about salary, but almost nothing about the job itself. And, of course, it is better not to get in touch with those specialists who praise themselves a lot, but cannot write the most elementary code correctly at the interview.

Where to find good programmers?

We have figured out what to ask at the IT questions for interview, but for many employers (especially small and recently opened IT-companies) it is a problem to find good specialists to interview them. As a rule, high-level programmers with a lot of experience rarely look for a job themselves, rather it finds them. And the search for suitable candidates can take several months. To avoid wasting your time, nerves and strength, contact the Job Advice Agency recruiting agency.

Our agency will select candidates for you, whose resumes fully meet the requirements. And after that, you will be able to ask work interview questions at the interview and hire a specialist that you are completely satisfied with.