[thelist] Interview Questions

GregHolmes at aol.com GregHolmes at aol.com
Fri Feb 8 07:39:00 CST 2002


Kristy Frey <kristenannfrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Anyone out there have suggestions for questions or techniques to verify that
>someone is truly qualified for a web development position during an interview.
>These days, so many people lie about their skill sets.  I'm actually writing
>a small quiz to give our candidates before the interview just to verify that
>they have some basic SQL skills, Advanced HTML skills, programming logic...


Here are some knowledge-specific questions to test "HTML experts" that I posted
last year.  I came up with these to test my replacement at my last job:

What is the label tag for?
  What advantages does it offer (i.e., why would you use it)?
  What browsers support it?
  Can you write a quick example of it's use on the whiteboard?
  How would you avoid problems with browsers that don't support it?
  (use span tag for styling, etc.)

What is "valid HTML"?
  How can you validate a page?
  Why is validation important?

What are some potential problems with using tables for layout?
  What alternatives are there?
  What are potential problems with the alternatives?

What is the layer tag?
  What is it for?
  What browsers support it?
  Is it valid HTML?
  What is the standards-compliant equivalent?

..and so on.  I like the layered approach -- they think they're home
free after answering the initial question, then you dig deeper and
deeper.  You can also jump into more general topics from these questions
-- like accessibility from the label tag question.

Even for "religious" question like tables-for-layout, you at least
see if they know what the pros and cons are.

Greg Holmes
gregholmes at aol.com




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