Though not specifically targeted at a Web Application Developer position, you might get some ideas from On Interviewing and Interview Questions.
Since I wrote that article, I've got good value from putting up some code on a whiteboard at the interview with a variety of errors, dubious coding practices, and stylistic discussion points. Apart from testing whether the candidate can find the errors, I've found these sorts of questions doubly useful in watching how they go about finding them (e.g. do they devise "boundary condition" test data and step through the code with it?), and especially in drawing the candidate into a discussion on stylistic issues and sound programming practices in general, and gaining insights into their personality and passion for programming. Passion is probably the main thing I'm looking for.
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This is a question which comes up rather frequently.
Since I don't have refs at the tip of my tongue, suggest you use Google (for this site only) or Super Search with search terms such as employ (or employment) + interview.
On the other hand, as your third sentence acknowledges, you'll have to know Perl well (or have a grader who does) to make any "real-time" quiz useful... and even that won't tell you whether the individual is like one of my (former) fire-fighters: able to quote almost any sort of arcane datum relating to fire service matters... but utterly worthless on a call. | [reply] |
To avoid "circulating list of answers" syndrome, I like to suggest asking them to design and write a vaguely-described small module to see what they do. Do they start writing code right away, or do they ask more qustions to pin things down better? Do they say something like "I'd use Module::Starter to get my skeleton files, then ..."
Do they write tests, or at least mention that tests would be a good idea? Do they say "we should check CPAN first"? | [reply] |