What is a good C# ASP.NET MVC question to ask a prospective employee?

Question

I am about to employ a new programmer for our ASP.NET MVC projects. I put a lot of weight in an interview as to just how much I like a candidate's attitude and how I see them working with, talking to and enjoying being part of the team, but on a more practical note I need to weedle out those who talk a good game from those who actually have ability to adapt and overcome programming problems day to day.

Can anyone suggest any good short questions/exercises (preferably in C#) to separate the smart candidates from the good talkers?

UPDATE - Many thanks to all who answered, I have chosen the most voted for in traditional StackOverlfow manner, but still thanks for all the other suggestions.

Answer 1

What is MVC?

Answer 2

tell him to draw the flow of the ASP.NET MVC model on the writeboard

Answer 3

First things first. Do they even know what MVC. Not just the TAL but can they describe it to you. Then what are the benefits. Also it doesn't hurt to ask them their opinion on it. It is good to know if they even like MVC frameworks.

Next, ask them if they have used any other MVC frameworks. Struts, Spring MVC, Zend or anything like that.

Ask them if they know when a session starts, the general state problem on the net etc etc.

Also a little bit of database. Ask them if they have any experience with database persistence layers.

Then just because you can ask a hard technical question, ask them to write a function that compares two binary trees both in value and structure to see if they are identicial.

Answer 4

See:

how-to-weed-out-the-bad-programmers-from-the-competent-ones-in-the-interview-proc and good-c#-interview-questions-for-a-senior-dev-position

Take in mind that everyone does not know what MVC is so don't try to think thats a good question.

One question could be are they familiar with lambdas and how they work in c#?

I would suggest also analyzing their problem solving techniques: not problems that you can't solve yourself, but ones that take just a little thinking.

Answer 5

Which letter from MVC acronym should be responsible for performing the following features in online shop web application:

• calculating the total amount to pay for items in cart (M)
• build an html table of items to purchase (V)
• redirecting not authenticated users to the page where they can enter billing information (C)

etc.

Answer 6

Are you hiring a contractor for a short term project?

If the answer is no, I don't think MVC should really factor into the scenario. You should almost never expect a non hired-gun employee to just drop in and be productive. Truthfully, MVC isn't exactly a difficult learning curve. If you are hiring someone for the long term, and their first project just happens to be an MVC site, I think you are much better served judging their general aptitude, not so much a specific technology.

Instead, see what they understand of design patterns. MVC isnt exactly a new methodology. If the person is able to comprehend SOC, they should easily be able to learn the specifics of MVC. Hell, they probably could learn it on the fly.

Answer 7

It is funny. I asked a close question just the other day. Check out if you find something useful there.

Can asking a developer whether he prefers WebForms or MVC be a good indicator of his proficiency?

Answer 8

You can ask them: How Asp.net MVC Is helpful in making Search Engine friendly websites? How Routings work in .net MVC?, What is the role of ViewEngine in asp.net, can we use customize viewengine if yes then how? How can we make controller classes without suffixing "Contrller" in the class name?

Answer 9

Ask them to make a couple of substantial (but simple) changes to an existing MVC site.

This will allow you to watch how familiar they are with the organization of an MVC site. If you ask them to make an HTML change, do they go straight to the Views folder? If your change is in business logic, do they go straight to the controller action?

Sounds a bit obvious, I realize. But if they hesitate with these things, it means they haven't actually spent much time in MVC. You're testing for speed, really.

Answer 10

Answer the following from the list below.

A fat model refers to?

A. Kate Moss in 30+ years time. Elaborate.
B. MVC how it should be. Explain.
C. Non of the above.

If they dont even acknowledge your feeble attempt at humour, ask them to leave. ;)