Technical Software Interviews

Stuart has 20 years of experience in conducting technical interviews on software developers (including for lead, architect, and enterprise-level seniority), especially when looking for C#, .Net, and Azure candidates.

One of South Africa’s largest tech recruitment companies invited Stuart to blog about what technical interviews are REALLY all about.

In a 60 minute interview, Vanestum will provide detailed feedback on the candidate concerning the following subjects:

Soft Skills Evaluation

  • Systematic approach to problem solving
  • Emotional maturity under pressure
  • Fit-to-team, e.g. the ability to adapt to different styles, processes, and methodology.

Technical Skills Evaluation

  • Time and Memory complexity of algorithms
  • Coding Skills – does the candidate understand that code is primarily written for ‘the next guy’ to be able to read and maintain code.
  • Software testing – Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Mocking, Acceptance Testing, and Smoke Testing. All of which can be automated, and all are essential in a robust system.
  • OO skills, including basic, and SOLID concepts, going beyond just the acronyms. Did you know one of Uncle Bob’s great passions is software testability? Is it really a great idea to use inheritance to achieve DRY reuse?
  • System Design skills – beyond simply listing Gang of Four patterns, does the candidate understand the use case for the pattern, and when to use / not use each? Has the candidate implemented any anti-patterns in previous projects – and what was learned from them?
  • Enterprise Design skills – does the candidate understand concepts such as Event Driven Architecture, and ability to model inter-system throughput and latency. When is the right time to break up larger systems into microservices?