4 ms·

Some of the "soft" questions I've recently started asking interview candidates: What computing blogs / magazines do you read? - To see if he keeps up-to-date o

Some of the "soft" questions I've recently started asking interview candidates: What computing blogs / magazines do you read? - To see if he keeps up-to-date on trends in technology. What are some of your favourite languages? What do you code with in your free time? - Not just to gauge passion, but also to see how diverse his toolset is. Someone who knows Java, Clojure and Matlab is well-rounded. Someone who knows only Java, C++ and C# is not. What do you dislike about your favourite language? - To make sure the guy isn't a religious nut, since we probably don't use his favourite. Who are the key people in your field? - For a given topic the developer is passionate about, there should be someone whose papers he's read plenty of times. Why did you leave your last job? - Pretty standard one, but always key. I also require a cover letter of everyone who applies, plus I tell recruiters that I want the resume in LaTeX. In addition to gauging writing skills and technical adeptness, those two requirements are a pretty good filter against spray-and-pray applicants.

bostonvaulter2 16y ago
> What computing blogs / magazines do you read? Would Hacker News/Proggit be an acceptable answer?
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  Of course, so long as it's in conjunction with a few direct sources.
cookiecaper 16y ago
>What computing blogs / magazines do you read? Someone asked me this fairly recently, but he said "what technical stuff do you read?", which I had a pretty hard time answering because I think my definition of technical was much stricter than his. He mentioned that I had written about Joel Spolsky, for instance, but Joel is not really a technical writer -- he writes about business, etc. within his technical company. I ended up just saying "whatever's on Hacker News, basically", because I don't really follow any blogs regularly any more. I should have said Lambda the Ultimate, I guess; that used to be on my feed reader (still is, but I never use feed reader anymore).
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  I agree with you about business blogs. SvN is the same way. I find the best technical articles in ACM and IEEE publications.

bostonvaulter2 16y ago

> What computing blogs / magazines do you read? Would Hacker News/Proggit be an acceptable answer?

chrisaycock 16y ago
Of course, so long as it's in conjunction with a few direct sources.

cookiecaper 16y ago

>What computing blogs / magazines do you read? Someone asked me this fairly recently, but he said "what technical stuff do you read?", which I had a pretty hard time answering because I think my definition of technical was much stricter than his. He mentioned that I had written about Joel Spolsky, for instance, but Joel is not really a technical writer -- he writes about business, etc. within his technical company. I ended up just saying "whatever's on Hacker News, basically", because I don't really follow any blogs regularly any more. I should have said Lambda the Ultimate, I guess; that used to be on my feed reader (still is, but I never use feed reader anymore).

chrisaycock 16y ago
I agree with you about business blogs. SvN is the same way. I find the best technical articles in ACM and IEEE publications.