Preparing Interview Questions

Software Craftsman | Written by Sandro Mancuso as Kwon Oh-in | Gilbert | 25 Sep 2015

1. A good interview should be like a free discussion. We need to exchange knowledge and information about software development, and we need to discuss technologies, tools, and methodologies.
2. What are our core values? What are the main skills we need? What are the things you want to do better, do you want to get better? Before you hire a new person, you need to prepare your own answers to these questions.

Why should I prepare questions?

An interview is the process of finding a colleague to work with. The interviewer should determine if the candidate is the person we need, whether he or she is a good person to work with, and whether he or she is a good person to work with.

However, I've seen many cases where the interviewer failed to ask the applicant a few questions or failed to evaluate the applicant because he was focused on the question.

Considering the applicant's time and effort to support our company, the interviewer also needs to be prepared at a minimum. Preparing interview questions will allow you to focus your assessment of the candidate and allow for rich conversations during the interview.

When should I prepare my questions?

If you don't have much experience as an interviewer, you need to prepare a day in advance. This is because you need to prepare a list of questions by looking at the applicant's cover letter and project history, and if you have a tech stack that you have never done before, you need to prepare questions after basic learning.

If you have a lot of experience as an interviewer, it is enough to prepare 30~60 minutes in advance. This is because at this time, it is easy to look at your resume and come up with a list of questions. And in many cases, we already know about the tech stack.

How to create a list of questions

The list of questions should be prepared by looking at the cover letter and performance history on the resume. Write it in a place where you can write text, such as a notepad or Word, and use a list of questions during the interview.

Here's an example of a list of questions I wrote while preparing for an interview:

# Self-introduction
- What is the "comfortable user experience" that you have thought about?
- What is the "clean code that is easy to read and maintain" that you think of?
- Why did you become interested in functional programming?

# Performance history
## A project
- Why did you choose SPA?
- What are the points to consider when using SPA?
- What role did you play as a team leader?
- What are the team rules and branch strategies?

## B project
- You switched from Redux to React Query, what was inconvenient about Redux?
- Did React Query solve it?
- How was the conversion process?
- Were there any inconveniences caused by the introduction of React Query?

List of questions by type Examples

Narrow range of questions

• What kind of techset did you use?
• What role did you play in this project?
• What problems did you solve using this?
• How did you go about documenting it?

Questions from a wide range

• Is there anything you've done on this project/internship that stands out to you?
• Is there anything you want to brag about here?
• Were there any problems that you struggled with or struggled to solve while working on this project?
• How did you approach solving this problem?

Empirical Questions

Empirical questions can be asked if the applicant's work experience matches your own. In this area, expanding the coverage of knowledge can increase the amount of questions.

1. A question about the expected performance issues based on the service features
2. A question about the cache behavior of Recoil's Selector

Questions about a resume written in the abstract

Sometimes, there are applicants who write their resumes in an abstract way, and in this situation, this is a question that can give you an idea of how the applicant has done FE development work concretely.

1. A question asking for a career description focused on JavaScript
2. A question about how JavaScript was used in the service

Coming up with new questions during the interview

1. After the applicant has finished introducing themselves, ask questions about the project or technology they mentioned in their introduction.

• You can follow up the interview questions naturally.

1. If the candidate says they've done something, ask them about their recent relevant experiences.

• You can make sure that the applicant has really experienced it.

1. Ask questions in-depth, not short-answer questions

• If you end up with a short answer, you will continue the conversation in a consumptive way, so if you ask in-depth questions, you can naturally continue the question.