I really want to ask this questions to my fellow developers here in Programmers.SE because i am hiring freshers for my company.. Even though i know some basic questions that can be asked to a fresher during interview and i want to know,
What are the skills you look for when hiring a fresher/newbie for developement?
First and foremost, see if the student has got a desire to learn. According to me puzzles/ English based exams are just pointless. I could probably accept testing a person's English skills, but that should not be based on a "test". It should be based on how they communicate their ideas. Asking them to solve puzzles is just a hogwash.
To see their desire to learn, you could question them in various grounds. Assuming that their resume is true, look for a person who has a good skill set. Interview that student along with 2/3 people who are well-versed in those skill sets (for example C++/ C#/ Java). Normally in India, I have seen students just add C / C++ to their resume irrespective of how confident they are. To test whether they are pretty confident in C/C++, test them in its basics like pointers/related data structures. Probably you could also ask them solve simple problems, or debug a faulty piece of code etc.
Personally, I don't think that the student should be from computer science (neither am I). If they are from CS test them in their basics - like automata, algorithms,discrete structures, computer networks etc. etc. If they are not from CS, you could still test them in data structures, as this course is pretty much common across departments. Even if they are not from CS, based on their resume, you could ask questions related to their area of interest. And, don't just go by their grades. They are not indicators to their programming knowledge.
For me following three are important -
Loyalty : All things can be taught to loyal people.
Commitment : Does he think Job as a Mission or Drudgery.
Integrity : Values shape up all other skills, to differentiate one works hard to acquire rest of the skills.
About Programming, I think the following things matter:
Problem Solving Skills (Aptitude)
In depth Knowledge of Programming languages
Experience in atleast one Project in a specific language
A good(atleast OKAY) record while pursuing Computer Science(or equivalent) education.
In principle, it’s simple. You’re looking for people who are
Hiring someone fresh out of school is a mixed bag: university is so different than production coding, that unless the potential hire has a long record of open source contribution to show off, there's no telling if he or she will adapt to the real world, let alone how.
The up side is that one gets to introduce that newbie to real-world coding and (hopefully) mold him or her into a useful sort of coder. That is what I have in mind when evaluating this type of candidate. I look for one who:
has pursued opportunities to better his/her craft outside of school requirements, whether in the form of open source contributions (preferable) or personal hobby coding
has a logical way of approaching problems
groks hacker culture (or, for bosses other than me, the particular corporate culture the person is being hired in)
is not just intelligent, but also engaged
responds well to correction/criticism and generally isn't someone who's ego I need to protect
knows how to learn on the fly, and learn independently
The most important qualities a fresher should have is the right attitude and problem solving capabilities. The right attitude can be checked by asking them the questions about the final year project. Check if the person was really involved in the project. See his/her enthusiasm. Check if the person has enthusiasm in programming. Check if he/she has participated in any competition or member of any organization.
Problem solving capabilities can be checked by asking small puzzles which can be solved using hints. More stress should be given on the way how the problem was attacked. This can also be checked by giving small programming assignment (second greatest in an array, finding stream of k consecutive zeros, or Joel's favorite number of set bits in an int) in their favorite language. Again rather than whether he/she knows the problem, the emphasis should be on how he/she is tackling the problem.
Since you are hiring fresher in India, my suggestion would be like following.
Resume : This will tell you their confident and clarity of their knowledge will clearly. Many people follows the template resume from Naukri or some of the websites and will put the polished words, but not about their skills. This will surely indicate that they are not capable for doing independently.
See their academic score from resume. If it is above 65% to 70% consistently across the all level, you can have confident that they can work consistently.
I mostly check for basic programming skills and look for good aptitude. For Aptitude you can ask them to solve them some basic mathematical problems.
I strongly believe that a only good maths guy can be good programmer. If someone's maths is weak he cannot ever ship good code or write good algorithms.
Freshers with these basic qualities can be trained and made productive in no time.
I've recently done a fair bit of hiring. The first thing I'm looking for is basic coding skills. We get our agent to make them sit technical test which asks them to write some basic algorithms (and also some SQL).
If they do well enough in that, we'll get them in for an interview. If they have good communication skills, and don't seem too full of themselves, it's a likely hire.
