Hiring a perfect developer is quite a tough job. If you fail to analyze the right skills and qualities of a developer then you are putting your company at high risk.
Programming language is very complicated which includes lot of codes. And so interviewing with the right questions to developers is very necessary to find out the right developer for your organization.
Preparing for the Interview:
Software developing jobs mostly come under the technical sector, so the interviewer would surely get down with the technical questions to assess their knowledge on the job role they are applying.
But for hiring the right candidates, you not only have to assess their subjective knowledge but also have to ask questions to analyze their personality and ethics they carry.
Here are few interview tips for software developer hiring
Now before the interview, the employer/interviewer should very well get prepared with all the requirements needed and the important questions that they need to ask the candidates. This helps to hire the best candidate in the organization.
Every company works on different projects, so the requirements and needs would differ accordingly. The same thing applies when asking questions in an interview. But before that, here are few general tips interviewers need to follow during the interview.
- Know the project requirements
- Know the budget
- Know the deadline
- Prepare your questions in advance
Software Engineer Hiring Process:
The recruitment process of a software engineer basically comprises of three stages. Though every company has its own defined recruitment process for selecting employees, here we will be discussing the generalized form of a hiring process.
Stage 1- Basic questions about yourself along with past work experience involved in this stage.
Stage 2 – Complete technical round, here the questions will be asked to assess the developer’s skills and abilities.
Stage 3 – Here employees can ask questions to the interviewer about the company as well as the job role.
The interview process should be very straightforward and up to the point. We have listed a few important interview questions for software developers which you can prefer to ask.
Software Developer Interview Questions and Answers:
1. Why did you want to be a software developer?
There might be certain reasons why the interviewee wants to be a software developer, but the most common answer would be, “Because I love coding”. A real developer would be passionate about his work and have a deep focus on his ongoing projects. If someone is being a developer just because they are paid high, then it’s better to ignore him.
2. Why should we hire you and not the other applicants?
This is one of the most common questions which are not only asked to software developers but to applicants in other job industries too. So you would better understand what kind of answer the developer should give in order to impress the interviewers.
3. Describe the software development process:
The software development process is like a life cycle of particular software. If the developer can answer and describe the process accurately, that means he be well acquainted with the cycle. The process is composed of the following activities: Requirement analysis > Specification > Software architecture > Implementation > Testing > Documentation > Training and support > Maintenance.
4. What projects are you working on personally?
There might be some projects on which the developer is personally working on from home. If he is a passionate software developer then he would definitely strive hard to make a project successful. Therefore, you should learn about his ongoing projects which he is personally or professionally working on.
5. What projects have you completed till now?
He might have a list of fulfilled projects on which he contributed his skills. Looking at those projects would give you a better knowledge about the practical skills of the developer. You will learn about his experience and the quality of his coding. If he is a bad coder then it will be revealed from those projects.
6. What is the biggest problem you have faced in your projects and how did you solve it?
Every developer has supposedly faced problems while working on a project. If he is a genuine coder then he will definitely state the problems he has faced. Also, the developer will explain how he sorted it out and what the biggest challenges while working on the solutions were. Learning about the challenges will help you judge the developer better.
7. Why did this project fail?
If a project fails, there must be a certain reason for its failure. If the developer is genuine then he’ll accept the responsibility of the failed project, if it really didn’t work because of the errors he made. This also provides a better experience next time when he works on similar projects.
8. Which tools do you use to keep a track of requirements?
There are several ways to keep track of requirements. Although this is a technical question, the developer won’t hesitate to answer it. It can be an excel sheet or any other software he could use.
9. Which design patterns have you used and in what situations?
A good developer would state about the design patterns which he has practically used. For example, if in a particular project he has used Singleton, MVC, Template pattern and Iterator, then he would tell only about these. And if a developer is just pretending to be an all-rounder in software development, he would say that he used all design patterns, which is wrong.
10. Ask about his programming patterns:
Programming patterns include a number of variables like source control, testing, variable/file/class and application architecture decisions. If the developer straight away refuses of using any variable then it might be an awful answer. Instead, he’d supposed to say like his current employer does not use source control, but he has used it with his previous employers or for his personal projects at home.
11. What is the difference between computer software and computer program?
A computer program is a portion of programming code which executes a well-defined task and software includes programming code, its documentation and user guide.
12. What are the 3 principles to simplify your life?
This might sound something spiritual and related to life, but this is related to what you’re thinking right now. A developer’s life gets complex with extreme coding and so the 3 principles- KISS, YAGNI and DRY help him in overcoming it.
- KISS is ‘Keep it Simple Stupid’
- YAGNI stands for ‘You Aren’t Gonna Need It’
- DRY indicates ‘Don’t Repeat Yourself’.
This question generally stands out for experienced and senior developers, but still, you can let the interviewee learn about this to simplify his life.
13. Ask the full forms of abbreviations:
You can ask the full form of abbreviations related to the software development industry. Few known abbreviations include MVP, MVC, MVVM, SRS, SDLC, DFD, HIPO, ER, CASE, etc. A quick response is likely to impress the interviewer. You can also ask about their functions and how are they programmed.
14. What language do you prefer while writing complex algorithms?
Every developer would have a different viewpoint when it comes to the technical questions. Like the preferred language for complex algorithms, the choice might vary. For example, if a developer prefers extremely super high-level languages those are dynamic, and then he won’t need to worry about the low-level details.
15. Which are the important tools to test the quality of your codes?
The developer will state about the tools that he uses for quality assurance of his codes. A good developer will also explain how those tools help them in quality checking and unit testing of the codes.
16. How to create technical documentation of your product?
Good documentation of the product leads to profit. If the developer is a good one then he’ll explain a product documentation strategy which is focused on profit rather than the cost. In terms of marketing, technical documentation can bring you prospects.
17. Analyze CV:
Not to forget, you should give a deep reading to the developer’s CV. Check out the list of skills and experiences he has listed, and question him on that basis. Emphasize on those particular skills and see if he is really proficient with those. A good developer would not showcase any other skills that he doesn’t have and focus on the one that is listed.
18. Ask tricky questions:
Tricky questions refer to problem-solving questions which might not be related to the job. Such questions are fired to check the developer’s capability to find the correct solution within a short time. Brain racking questions tests the developers thinking skills and how smartly he can solve a problem. Similar questions are, “How would you store 1 million contact numbers?” or “How would you find a good estimate of 2000 samples from this set of data and write a code for it?”
19. Take a short coding test:
If you are still not convinced with the answers then you can take a practice test to judge the developer’s skills. This is even a better option rather firing a bundle of questions. Taking a practical examination will determine the capability and quality of the developer. You can take possible tests like Fizzbuzz during the interview which is a small test. Or maybe you can ask him to create a high-level design for a small system.
20. Question simply for a reason; he’s been referred:
Referrals have great powers than your skills. When the developer is sent by a referral or company person, you’ll interview him just because you need to. The developer has made strong contacts within the network and now he is capable of getting inside the company with the aid of that particular person. And since a company person or the manager referred him, you don’t have the chance to throw him away.
Software Engineer Interview Questions:
Here are a few interview questions a software developer is usually asked by an interviewer. The motive of asking these questions is to analyze not only his technical skills but also to check other important skills needed for a developer.
- Explain any of your previous project and the process which you opted to complete it.
- Did you experience any hindrances during your project and how you managed it?
- What is known as MVC?
- Do you use an agile software development process?
- How good are you with OOP analysis?
- Tell me something about multi-threading
- Describe the method in which you arrange your assets and class modules?
- What do you know about unit testing?
- What is ORM?
- Name the procedure of detecting a bug in an application?
- What is the average time spent on debugging?
Entry Level Software Engineer Interview Questions:
- What are the main categories of any software?
- Explain computer software and its types?
- What does the software manager do?
- What are his roles and responsibilities?
- Explain the difference between a computer program and computer software?
- Which SDLC model is the best?
- What is the difference between tags and branches?
- Explain the difference between stack and queue in java?
- Why do we need polymorphism?
- Explain software reengineering?
- Why using Catch (Exception) almost always a bad idea?
- How to Determine the size of a software product?
- Why do you think that the maintenance of software is expensive?
- How to execute multiple catch blocks for a single try statement in java?
- What is the difference between object-oriented and component-based language?
- What is the difference between .dll and .exe?
- Explain the stages of the software development process?
- What is the basic difference between Interface-oriented, Object-oriented, and Aspect-oriented programming?
- How do you define the scope in software?
- When you inherit a protected class-level variable, who is it available to?
- What are case tools in software engineering?
- What do you mean structured design?
- What is the difference between a process and a thread?
- Define cohesion?
- When should a class be abstract?
- How to prioritize requirements?
- Explain level-0 Data flow diagram?
- What do you need for testing the code quality?
- Name a few available SDLC models?
- What do you mean by feasibility study?
- Explain Software configuration management?
- Define the terms is verification and validation?
- What kind of data is passed through HTTP Headers
- How can you assess whether your written code can handle different kinds of error situation?
- Explain functional programming?
- What do you mean by strong-typing and weak-typing? Which is the most preferred? Why?
- Define function points?
- Name a few software analysis & design tools?
- Explain Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control?
- what is the meaning of debugging In software development process?
- What are the available software project estimation techniques?
- Explain functional and non-functional requirements?
- Name the process model that removes defects before software getting into trouble?
- What is the difference between Pseudo Code and structured English?
- How to analyze that your code is both fast and safe?
- Describe the ways to measure project execution?
- Define modularization?
- Name any two tools which help in keeping track of software requirements?
- Explain a few project management tools.
- Explain the difference between a mock and stubs
- What do you mean by software requirements?
- Which languages do you prefer for coding programming algorithms?
- Define software metric?
Conclusion:
Basically, employers prefer to ask technical questions to software developers. Since the numbers of developers are quite huge and it’s tough to figure out the perfect one and that’s why the technical tests are indeed necessary to take.
Quality lies in coding too and all developers do not know that right quality. So if you are going to interview any developer, these questions would be very helpful to select the one you wanted.
