RE: [PHP] Testing new employees...

Honestly, a phone interview made by HR should try to appraise the candidate on all the more "general" grounds. If HR wants that someone asks more technical questions, even boradly technical one, they should pass the call on to someone who can actually have a meaningful discussion. When I hired people it was always teammwork between HR and us. I would filter the pile of resumes and so would they and we would talk about it and usually ended up with a short pile of CVs both teams really thought would be interesting. Remember, the person on the other side probably has many options available. They have questions too, and HR will not really answer them satisfactorily. And might chose not to consider your company depending on the people they talk too. And you can get a lot out of the small techie chat and the *way* a person answers questions, and the questions they ask. I, as potential employe (which I am not, but for the sake of argument) for one would object to have a clueless HR person ask me questions like that. I would really dislike not talking to a person from the team I might be joining, to ask them a few questions too. If I am not considered worthy of the time, then you are wasting my time. Anyway, most of your questions are nice one, but could not be evaluated by HR. > In lieu of 'tech' questions, you may be able to take the approach of > > 1) Can you do xxx with PHP? That's a nice one, depending on the choice of xxx. Should actually be (if a real person is handling the interview) 1. can you do xxx with PHP? 2. if yes, how? If no, why? 3. Would you *choose* to do it in php or is it really not appropriate > 2) How would you approach problem yyy? Always the best type, but keep it for the real interview. Again, the choice of yyy is crucial, as it must be simple enough to come up with something within a minute, but not too dumb. > 3) Give me an example of when zzz would be used. how can HR evaluate that? > 4) What are two good PHP building sites? *grin* honestly... many people whom I would not trust to write a simple email form would know the answer to that one. > 5) Why is PHP used instead of Javascript? Lol, they'd better scoff at that one. Although the realistic answer is "sometimes you need both". > 6) Compare and contrast PHP vs ASP vs ISAPI that's a silly question - unless the person has worked with all 3 all you can get is a "theoretical out of school or article" answer - and someone not really knowing the answer to that could still know web development very well. Now contrasting the PHP-ASP-CF approach to the "pure" cgi approach to something like servlets is a more meaningful question. > 7) Who started PHP? (More of a "breadth" vs "depth" > question, but shows > active interest in the history/founding of PHP) shows age, too ;) > 8) Name the optimiser built into PHP4. > 9) Is PHP an interpreted or compiled language? lol, anyone who doesn't almost sound extremely miffed that you would even ask such questions should be removed from the list of prospects right away > 10) Name a site that uses PHP. (They'd better know at LEAST > 1, since they're claiming to have used it before it should be one that > they've worked on.) that should be in the cv already. Why not ask them to name a site or two that uses php in a clever way, and then try to puzzle how the people there have done it (which we all do when we encounter such sites anyway, no?) 11) Tell me of a "wow, PHP is very cool" moment you've had. What I mean by that is the times when you find out that there is a really simple, neat way to do some not-so-simple-sounding part of your project. A good way to see if someone worked with a language/platform is to see if they are aware of the problems/limitations. You will recognize right away that someone has done real development cause they will have quite passionate answers to some of those questions: 11) What are the things you really wish PHP did differently? (ooh don't get me started) 12) Do you remember an example when you really kept banging your head on a problem which turned out to be a PHP design limitation? What did you do 13) ever did something really stupid? Anyone answering no should be discarded - they're likely to do it when on your project ;) etc. Joelle Nebbe _______________________________________________________________________ Any opinions expressed in the email are those of the individual and not necessarily the company. This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and solely for the use of the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient or the person responsible for delivering to the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error and that any use is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error please notify the IT manager by telephone on 0113 243 2701 _______________________________________________________________________