The hiring process can be arduous for both the company and for the software developer. To help ease both sides of the playing field during the interview process, here is a short guide of the top ten questions the employer may ask with explanations to assess the software developer’s teamwork and technical skills.
Top 10 Interview Questions for IT Remote Workers
Explain an experience working remotely on a software development project.
An employer will need to know several things about a candidate, especially the most important one of all: remote experience. This will establish if the candidate is reliable. Ensure to ask the candidate specifics of the experience if the recruiter is given a generalized answer.
Were there any obstacles you need to overcome while working on a remote project?
This question goes with the first one. It helps the employer to assess the candidate’s ability to overcome obstacles and challenges to find a solution. The employer can learn about the candidate’s ability to be flexible in situations and contribute to finding a solution with others.
Are you familiar or have used any calendar and task management applications?
A remote worker will need to have self-management skills. A project manager cannot check on each developer and progress every second of the day. The candidate will need to have impeccable self-management skills to stay focused and on task whether the candidate uses applications or set goals daily. This will also assess if the candidate is a self-motivator or needs help from team members or project manager to get started.
The candidate may use applications to aide in workflow and communicate with team members. Some of the applications a candidate may use are calendars, time or task management tracking apps, collaboration apps, email, messengers, and more. If the recruiter is not familiar with a specific application, they may ask the candidate to clarify how it helps aide the candidate to complete the tasks or project.
You are working on a software project and your team members are offline. How would you handle an urgent issue that needed immediate attention without the help of your team members?
This is an open-ended question for the employer to assess the candidate’s ability to handle stress and uncertain situations that may arise. It can help identify if the candidate is confident in their abilities to work in stress-induced environments without others around to ask for help or solutions.
Explain your troubleshooting process.
Have the candidate explain their process and correlate it to the company’s troubleshooting procedures. For example, if the candidate waits around for an answer then the conclusion is that this candidate is not the right developer for the project as time will be wasted instead of continuing with other tasks. If they decided on a solution, have the candidate explain why.
Describe a time when working on a remote project you had to solve a problem. What was the problem? What was the outcome?
Problems and challenges will arise in every project. The recruiter is determining if a candidate can solve problems efficiently and learn from them for the next project. Have the developer explain why they chose a solution and what the outcome was, positive or negative.
Here is X project. Explain how you would begin to work on this project.
This is assessing the candidate’s ability to handle tasks and whether they are self-motivated. If a candidate details specific steps and procedures for a project that aligns with the company’s, then this candidate will mostly like develop a great final product.
Describe a typical remote working day on a project.
This question has a specific answer. The day should begin with checking email and notifications. Then, tasks are prioritized based on urgency.
What are your available working hours?
Remote workers can be based anywhere. It is important to have the candidate’s available working hours in their time zone with the company’s time zone.
Do you have a go-to strategy when a problem arises or when you get stuck on a project?
Another open-ended question to see if the candidate’s processes aligns with the company’s procedures on a problem. This will assess the candidate’s problem-solving skills.
These questions are to help the employer assess if the software developer soft skills is the best candidate for the team-based project and for the company.
Assessing Technical Skills
The technical aspect of the interview can be a bit harder to assess with a candidate’s portfolio. As with any portfolio, the candidate showcases their skills to develop projects using a final product. However, more questions can arise about the developer’s technical skills. How did the developer handle the stress? Even questions like did the developer really create this? To help minimize second guessing a developer’s hard skills, here are the most common technical assessment tools an employer can give to the candidate:
• CodePad: Have recruitment software? Integrate CodePad into its interface to assess, and record, the candidate’s technical skills to be reviewed upon by the in-house team.
• Codingame: This application enables an employer to review all candidate’s performance using a score-based grade for comparison.
• CodeInterview: A cloud-based tool utilizes a code editor, creating question libraries and code snippets to assess the candidate.
• Testdome: This tool allows the employer to select a predefined test or a created test to give to the candidate to take. Testdome prevents the candidate from cheating by disabling the copy-paste shortkey for fair, accurate results.
• HackerRank: It is a live coding environment to assess how the candidate handles real-time issues on a project. The employer can select from the available tests or a created test.
• Type12: This application pre-configures to the employer’s software set for each interview as the application assesses the technical skills of the aspiring developer.
These top ten questions and technical assessment resources are a guide to help the employer recruit the best candidate for the project and for the company. The questions and assessment resources aide to assess the candidate’s motivation level, self-discipline, and problem-solving skills for a remote project. A prospective candidate’s soft and technical skills needs to be aligned with the company’s goals and vision.
Need help hiring remote developers for your next project? Contact VUSE now!
