recruitment

How can I make a non-programming person recognize a good programmer?

Let's assume that I would be a good programmer and I knew that my (non programming) customer will have to decide between me and a competitor. Let's say that I, as an experienced programmer, would obviously see that my competitor is inexperienced and trying to fool the customer with some nice presentations or an expensive suit. And here...

How to recognize a good programmer?

Our company is looking for new programmers. And here comes the problem - there are many developers who look really great at the interview, seem to know the technology you need and have a good job background, but after two moths of work, you find out that they are not able to work in a team, writing some code takes them very long time, an...

Job interview coding task

According to Manoj's answer to my question here, what do you suggest as a good problem that should stretch the interviewee's (horrible word ;-) programming capabilities and show whether he is a good programmer? ...

Have recruitment agencies ever held back your career?

Over the last few months i have been looking to change career from graphic artist to web developer. I used to be a senior web developer during the dot com boom, overseeing a few juniors but decided to follow graphics a little more and left software behind as a career. Now it seems looking for a new career in web development, i need 'n' ...

Hiring PHP developers: Are PHP skills alone sufficient?

We are looking for people with decent PHP skills. Even though they are intended to program most of the time in PHP, I'm not sure that php experience alone is enough. Maybe I'm wrong but I cannot resist to hold that any good php developer eventually have become proficient in php programming because he learnt a more fundamental language li...

What can my company offer to attract junior- to mid-level software engineers?

My company is having difficulty attracting the number of software engineers needed to keep up with business. We are in a very competitive market, with neighboring (geographically) companies all competing for the same pool of people. Realistically, and given the conditions of today's economy, what perks can we offer to attract engineers...

Have you found it harder to hire in a down market?

Several responses to "What can my company offer to attract junior- to mid-level software engineers?" were something like "in this market, all you need to offer is a job." But my experience has been that good people still have a lot of choices. A friend of mine, someone I'd work with again in a heartbeat, was laid off two weeks ago. As o...

Balance of Development Skills within Team

We are trying to build a team of 6 developers for our website and web services with ASP.Net, WCF and DotNetNuke. How should we try to balance the skills between the web site team and web services team? This SO question seems to cover the balance of personalities but what suggestions are there for ensuring sufficient skill balance withi...

Skills to look for when hiring a web developer

Want to hire a developer to develop a web app (or SaaS) that allows teachers to create and sell their courses online through the site. Much like ChalkBoard.com What skills should I be looking for in such a developer? Also, what kind of hosting service should I look for since this app would need to be able to handle many concurrent user...

Where to find volunteers for an opensource project ?

The usual question being asked is: "I am cool and I want to provide my skills for an opensource project. Where do I find it?" Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1188982/what-is-the-best-way-to-find-a-open-source-project-to-volunteer-for-closed However, I found no trace of the opposite question. Suppose I have a project plan, b...

Half-finished projects a bad thing for prospective employers?

I'm currently 19 and studying Bachelor of IT. Like any programmer I spend a lot of time pursuing pet projects. Some of them are based around promising ideas, some are just because I want to try them. Many projects end up on hold as more important things come up, or I come up with a better idea, and I feel a little guilty for pursuing it...

Java recruitment test?

I have just applied for a Java developer job and the recruiter told me he wanted me to take an online Java test to see how my Java knowledge was. Fact questions with multiple answers. Does anyone have idea what site it could be? Tips on what should i prepare? -- So, i got to make this test: Java 2 - Non-GUI Which consisted of questi...

how to determine if someone will make a good programmer

My current company is starting a development project with another afiliated company. We are a programming shop but the other company has no developers. We will be creating an app for that company but then the company will take it in charge so they want to have two developers of their own for this, to be involved in all stages of the de...