intended audience: interviewer
Guidance differs slighly for in-person interviews
The candidate will have been sent a link to the candidate information, highlighting the remote interview process.
The candidate should have cloned the skeleton project repository on their machine.
Ask the candidate to share their screen and ensure the following are working properly:
- audio
- video
- IDE font-size
Get some pen and paper in case the candidate (or you) need to draw anything.
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. You will be required to submit your submission as a Gist or zip. You will also have the opportunity to ask the interviewer questions about the interview process, the role, the company, etc.
Provide guidance on where to start. For example, directory structure, where to add tests etc.
Try not to 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. Remember to request the candidate’s source code as a Github Gist or zip file.
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 let candidates push their 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.