intended audience: interviewer
Guidance differs slighly for remote interviews
Choose an exercise, checkout the skeleton project repository, prepare your machine and setup up your IDE.
Turn off notifications and other possible distractions for the candidate; an easy way to do this is to use a different browser profile and closing your work profile.
Get some pen and paper in case the candidate (or you) need to draw anything.
The developer manager for the role will collect the candidate from reception and bring them to your desk.
Offer the candidate a drink.
Explain what you’re going to be doing today.
This is the coding exercise stage of the interview process. We’ll spend about 45 - 60 minutes writing code to solve a problem. We’re not assessing you on your deep technical knowledge or your understanding of the standard library, we’re more interested in how you solve a problem. With that in mind, feel free to search online for anything, ask questions etc. It’s not about how far we get through the exercise.
Provide guidance on where to start. For example, directory structure, where to add tests etc.
Try not to touch the keyboard or dictate a solution as this doesn’t provide much detail about the candidate.
If the candidate is struggling, guide them to a solution. This can take many forms, such as diagramming, pseudo code etc.
If you see a really obvious mistake, don’t let the candidate struggle with it. For example, if they’ve misspelt a variable, passed arguments to a function in the wrong order etc.
Ask why the candidate is doing things that way to help understand their thought process.
Write up some notes about the interview focusing on the assessment criteria. Candidates can see what is expected at each level in the people section of our developers site. Interviewers may also find it useful to add some inline comments to the code. These will be useful in the wash-up for candidate, where the interviewers discuss the candidate as a whole and decide if an offer should be made or not.
If the candidate is largely performing at the level they have applied for, let HR know that you’d recommend the candidate advance to the next stage of the process.
If the candidate is performing below the level they have applied for, talk with the developer manager of the team the position is for as there may be a more junior role open that the candidate would be more suited for.
If the candidate has performed below the level they have applied for and there are no open positions more suited, inform HR that we won’t be progressing the candidate’s application and provide feedback structured around the assessment criteria.
Do not push the candidates solution to remote.
Raise an issue or PR for any improvements to the exercises.
Get your name added to the list of people who perform interviews.
Ensure your calendar is up to date with holidays, working from home days etc. as this helps determine availability.
More (internal) resources for Guardian Digital recruitment are available here.