Jason Bock

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Interview Questions

Here’s another list of mind-numbing questions you can ask others if you have to lead an interview. From my personal experience I know that I have to ask questions like this for people who say they’re “.NET experts” because they have no idea what an AppDomain is or what a value type is or what the difference is between an object and a class. But I get put off by this statement at the beginning of the list:

These questions assumes that you are well rounded and full blown .NET Web Developer. A .NET web developer should at least know ASP.NET, C#/VB.NET and TSQL.

TSQL?? Gimme a break. There’s a fair amount of questions on that list that I’d completely bomb on (#4, #16 … and really anything to do with databases) and I think I know a little bit about “.NET web development.”

When I interview someone [1], I’m looking for a couple of things:

• Are you technically competent? I’m not looking for the super-genius .NET guru who is busting mscorlib open in Reflector every day; just someone who understands what it takes to program in .NET effectively.
• Can you communicate effectively? In other words, do you piss people off on a regular basis with your written and verbal responses, or can you work well with all sorts of people?

That’s it. Nobody knows everything there is to know about software development; the key is to be able to acquire new knowledge quickly and work effectively with others.

[1] Remember that I work for a consulting company, so I’m looking for skills that I think a good consultant would have.

Published: 11.06.2007 08:22:51 PM CST

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