[Phpwm] Interviews & technical competency

[Phil Beynon]

> I had a Zend test at an interview once. The only criticism I would make is
> that the answers are based on doing it the Zend way. I could have argued
> that for several of the choices but as the guy who was
> interviewing wasn't a
> programmer there didn't seem much point.

Last time i was made to do a technical test at an interview I overscored and
was told I was too good for the job!

largely its going to depend on what you want from a person and what level of
knowledge you expect them to bring to a job, if you want someone who just is
given a task and does it then the next one you need someone different from
someone who can think "out of the box" and bring ideas and input to a
project.
Think up a simple project idea and get them to rough out a design spec, that
will weed out most of the duffers!

> I suppose if you are doing the interview you can constructively judge the
> quality of the answer.

Within the persons area of expertise yes - if I went to an interview and
they wanted to know about say using PHP for formatting / creating .pdf
documents on the fly the answer would be I know you can do it, I know where
to find out how to do it, but if they exepected me to quote syntax I woulod
fail since I haven't done it recently.

> Second option is to use an online psychometric programming test. Can't
> remember the URL but I had one of those at an interview and it was more
> accurate than the zend test.

Oh please...... those were largely discredited years ago! You can tell by
instinct if a person is likely to fit into a team without worrying what
their favorite colour is!

Phil