NYCPHP Meetup

[Kenneth Downs]

I can only offer my experience, which I hope will help some.

The best employees I've ever had for difficult or changing situations 
were those with general problem-solving skills.  In my two best cases, 
neither knew anything about the programming language we were using or 
the database when they were hired,but they quickly became invaluable and 
productive.  In both cases their resumes spoke of their basic 
intelligence and when I met them I like them, so I hired them (or begged 
the powers to be to hire them). 

As for questions, its good to have a formal test you ask them to take, 
but interviewing is an art you can only get good at with practice.  The 
usual advice applies, be yourself, ask questions about things that are 
important to you, and see how the person responds.  Also check with HR 
to find out what you are *not* allowed to ask, anything that could be 
construed to be a basis for discrimination like age.

If you like somebody and think they will work out, ask them to come back 
and invite in 2 or 3 of their potential coworkers and have a short 
brainstorming session on a problem you have at the moment.  See what 
they contribute.


Ben Sgro (ProjectSkyline) wrote:
> Good Morning,
>  
> In a few days, I will be sitting down with a perspective employee,
> and I'd like to get some feedback on good programming questions
> or excercises I can have them work on.
>  
> At my last job, prior to becomming a fulltime consultant, I was asked
> to create a login function, that checked the username and password
> against a file.
>  
> I did well, and felt that was a decent test. It had IO, security, string
> comparisions, fetching values from $_POST/$_GET ...
> This test was in addition to source code I provided for libraries I had
> written, and of course my resume.
>  
> Now, the position being filled is that of an entry level programmer.
> I do not expect this person to be well trained in PHP/MySQL,
> but they must have a pretty strong understanding of programming
> methodologies in general (they are a college grad - CIS).
>  
> So, again, what are some good metrics I can use to test these 
> perspective employees?
>  
> Thank you!
>  
> - Ben
>  
> Ben Sgro, Chief Engineer
> ProjectSkyLine - Defining New Horizons
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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-- 
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
www.secdat.com    www.andromeda-project.org
631-689-7200   Fax: 631-689-0527
cell: 631-379-0010

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