Web Developer Interview Questions

When hiring a web developer, it’s good to have a set of established questions to ask the candidate, not to catch them out, but to ascertain the level the candidate is working at.

We’ve all gone through the learning process (and still are in certain areas) so it is unfair to judge most answers as a negative response.

Rather than creating a list of closed questions where the candidate can only answer a right or wrong answer, I wanted to delve more into the candidate’s mindset, their motivation and experience, their experiences, their ambitions.

With this in mind, and a little help from some friends and peers on Twitter, I collated the following open questions.

  1. Briefly tell us about yourself and your work history?
  2. What do you know about [the company] and what is your opinion of our website?
  3. Based on the role profile, which of your strengths best fit the requirements?
  4. What’s your preferred development environment? (Windows, Mac, Linux)
  5. What experience do you have (if any) with ASP.NET or PHP?
  6. What do Web Standards mean to you?
  7. When do you use a HTML table?
  8. What are the benefits of using CSS?
  9. Give some examples where you have used JavaScript.
  10. If you have used any JavaScript libraries, which is your favourite and why?
  11. Which PHP/ASP.NET frameworks have you used and which is your favourite?
  12. What methods could you use to speed up the load time of a webpage?
  13. How can you improve the accessibility of an online form?
  14. Give some examples where Microformats are appropriate and where you have used them.
  15. Explain the process you would go through to debug a webpage or web app.
  16. (And finally…) What is it you like about being a web developer?

This is by no means a final list of questions but a starting block. You might think of other questions that are more appropriate to the role your company has created but I felt the above questions are at the level you come to expect from the modern web developer.

Feel free to contribute your own favourite questions to the comments below too.

Written by Si

September 3rd, 2008 at 8:34 pm

Posted in Employment, Interview, Nerd Talk, Web Development

5 Responses to 'Web Developer Interview Questions'

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  1. What’s your favourite web development blog and why? (do they keep up-to-date with the industry…)

    Simon Mackie

    4 Sep 08 at 10:24 am

  2. What browsers do you consider important, which are worth testing in, and how could you/do you implement solutions to ensure your sites work in these browsers?

    Andy Higgs

    12 Sep 08 at 1:00 pm

  3. What impact do you think Google Chrome (or other latest browser) will have on the browser market share? It’s interesting to note peoples perception on market share, and whether they are abreast of new technolgoies.

    It’s often good to follow this type of question with “In your opinion, what might cause a user to switch to Google Chrome?” or “Compare Google Chrome to Internet Explorer 8 / Firefox 3″. This will allow you to discover if the candidate knows what’s going on “under the hood” in these browsers and the differences between the rendering engines.

    Gary Francis

    16 Sep 08 at 9:20 am

  4. Also, throw in a few questions on seo (some stop at meta tags) and how they handle repetitive work (re-usability?) transforming design (psd/xaml etc) to html (if applicable - I know some companies hire psd to html ’specialists’ to do the dog work ;-), globalization/localization (if applicable to your site/industry). Interacting with 3rd party sites/services, web services, visitor tracking, and what the simplest form of ajax is (you’d be surprised how many are fooled into thinking you can only use ajax through a toolkit framework). Checking whether they’ve coded for different browsers (and which) is also good gauge of overall market exposure and experience. Oh, not forgetting security (user logon etc - if applicable). All these questions depend, of course, on the level of experience and expertise you’re looking to bring on board.

    Have fun

    Craig

    22 Sep 08 at 4:09 pm

  5. [...] Si has been busy looking for a new minion, and asked the ‘pack to suggest some good interview questions for a web developer. [...]

    Newsletter: September — a blog entry for the Multipack - A Community of Web Developers & Designers in Birmingham

    3 Oct 08 at 1:56 pm

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