​ Assessing Aptitude

​I have sat through too many interviews where the candidates claimed to have plenty of experience and they were even able to rattle off good answers to all of the technical questions, but then, when I would ask them to actually write a short program to solve a simple problem, they were totally unable to do so. Sometimes the contrast was downright shocking. Situations like this make two things readily apparent. First, requiring candidates to write actual source code as part of the interview process is crucial. Second, standard technical questions are not always effective.

The reason that such a stark contrast can exist is because most technical questions test for knowledge rather than aptitude.

Hiring by Personality-Type

As I have elaborated in some of my previous articles, the underlying personality of a developer should be of chief concern to you. Depending on the types of products that your team develops, you should have a desired ratio of personality-types among your engineers.  For instance, if you run a contracting service that develops websites for businesses, you will likely want a higher ratio of solution-providers on your team. If you develop pattern-recognition image-processing libraries, you likely want a higher ratio of puzzle-solvers.  Before hiring a new developer, you should seriously consider the type of developer of which you are currently most in need.