Suggestions for a Beginner Level ASP/XML Test

Question

I'm looking for suggestions for a beginner level ASP/XML test. Essentially I'm trying to hire an extremely junior programmer. I'm in the process of trying to hire a junior programmer to help maintain a large code base of somewhat repetitive ASP pages. I'm slowly in the process of making more modular, maintainable code but until that happens I'm trying to get away from having to change "one little thing" too often.

Anyway I'm looking for suggestions of ways to test for ability to handle these tasks. The applications I've been getting are people with minimal technical experience looking to "break into IT." I'm all for giving someone a chance, but I also want to test for some base level ability.

Answer 1

I would ask some basic math questions involving sets, statistics and the like. That kind of question can be somewhat hard, as they don´t depend on a background in IT.

If you want to include some programming questions I would ask something in the line:

"How do you implement integer division without using the division operator"

Another idea is teach them on the spot a made up language, something like logo, with four basic commands and some loop directives and ask then to draw squares, circles and what not with it.

Answer 2

Well as an absolute base you could try testing their consistency at mental modelling as per the academic articles linked from this Coding Horror post..

The next step is FizzBuzz

After that maybe something more domain specific, perhaps see if they can make one of the small changes you talk about to an existing piece of code?

Don't sugarcoat the last one either - give them a bit of existing code in all its presumably spaghetti-like glory to make a small change.

Answer 3

Sounds like an awful job, and I'm sure you aren't paying well ("I'm trying to hire an extremely junior programmer"). Just hire the one with the fewest misspelled words in his or her resume. Don't test too hard. Somebody over-qualified for the position will probably leave as soon as something better comes along.

Answer 4

tell them that you have a giant legacy asp/xml code base, and ask them how they would help you improve its maintainability

the first candidate that does not flee in terror and that comes up with a good suggestion should be hired immediately