Jeff said:
It seems that anyone can put anything on their resume and refer to
themselves as a "senior Web developer." What are some clues that can be used
by an IT manager during a hiring process to differentiate truly proficient
Web developers from the "less-than" proficient Web developers?
Thank You!
It's tricky; you have to have someone on your side that has the tech
knowledge to do the techie part of the interview. They need to ask some
questions about the general concepts of .NET, etc. (I assume you're
looking at .NET since you're in this newsgroup), to make sure they
understand the basics, then go upwards in difficulty from there to see
where their limits are at (as high as you are interested for your needs).
Also need the business part of the interview as well; I recommend doing
them together (multiple interviewers at once), so you can both get
feedback even though the content may only interest one person at one
time. Need to see how they work, what are their problem-solving skills,
how they handle adversity, etc. Some of this is info both interviewers
will want to know....
Beware of things like 'well, I did this training, or read this book, so
I know .NET'; hard experience is what you like to see. These phrases
are indicators they aren't prepared for real-life work with it (at a
senior level). If you have a very basic opening where no experience
would be OK, then that's fine (I'm not saying anyone w/ 0 experience
can't find a job
).
So hopefully you've got someone who can help you filter out the tech
side of it. I might recommend initial phone conversations (of shorter
length) to followup on interesting resumes; unfortunately resume
screening does not work in and of itself, as people have gotten 'better'
at using them to sell themselves up, the interview is where you
find all the details, but a full-blown interview takes up time.