It's been a while since I blogged last time. It was busy and interesting time for me. So, I guess, will have something to blog about.

I've come across a good example of Color Modelling and DNC use by Stephen Palmer: Modelling in Colour: Using the DNC. Recommended.

I guess, it's not news that you should prepare for the interview. For interviewer it is about learning candidate's resume and thinking out questions that the candidate is supposed to answer or discuss. Depending on the candidate's level my questions of course will be different, but in general I would divide them into following 3 categories:

1. Academic. These questions are concerned with more of a theoretical knowledge of the candidate and usually assume more or less exact answers. Something like "What is garbage collector? How does it work in .NET?" Also I try to put such questions in a way that will allow me to ask follow-up questions and elaborate the topic. E.g. if candidate says that there is generational garbage collector used in .NET, I would go ahead and ask what other types of GCs the candidate know and how they compare to generational GC. (Unfortunately, not so many candidates can take up a talk in this direction) If candidates know nothing about generational GC they usually compare .NET GC to Java by saying that .NET GC is "much better". Asking for more details is logical next step :)
2. Experience. Here I usually start with "What is your greatest professional achievement you are really proud of?" Then questions go to most remarkable notices from the resume.
3. Discussion. Questions or rather topics that allow more or less informal discussion. Often I just ask questions that I'm just curious about which are relevant to candidates experience or interests. Something like "How long does it take boost libraries to compile?" and so on about "usability" of boost. For me this section of interview is not about knowledge, but about opinion. I kind of assess candidate's general ability to think and present his thoughts.

Actually, if I see that that candidate feels comfortable on the interview I may use fourth category: provocative questions. Questions or assertions that go against common way of doing things or accepted knowledge with weak or irrational reasoning behind. I just need to say it confidently and ask the candidate for opinion. Well, sometimes I play so good that after all I have to say that it was just a joke and in reality it is somewhat different then I was saying.

Also the interview I try to create an atmosphere that helps to make it easier for the candidate to show his best. And I ask tricky questions only if I see that candidate can handle them. Interview is not about showing the candidate how miserable his knowledge or experience is, but about making him show everything he knows and can do.

If you are going to interview somebody be sure to check out The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing by Joel.

Is this going to be an interview for engineering position in .NET? You may find useful these sets of questions for interviewing .NET developers by Scott Hanselman: ASP.NET Interview Questions and What Great .NET Developers Ought to Know.

As a Business Unit manager I often interview candidates for engineering positions at Dnipropetrovs’k office of SoftServe. Recently I also was involved in preparing my guys for interview with client. So I know both, dark and light, sides of the interviewing process.

From my experience the most important this on the interview is to know the goal of the interview. When you interview somebody know requirements for the position candidate is applying for and know what qualities you want to discover in the candidate during the interview.

In fact, when I interview someone for junior position my main goal is to see potential for growth supported by ability to think and learn. For senior positions, I expect candidates to be able to apply their experience to solve open-ended problems and have their own opinion.

When you prepare for interview know what the person on the other side of the table expects from you. Is she only interested in technical expertise? Will your communication or leadership skills also be assessed? Will she try to see how you work under pressure? If you have answers to such questions, you will be able to prepare for the interview much more efficiently.

Did you know that several interviews from Founders at Work a available on-line here? I very much enjoyed stories of Joel Spolsky and Steve Wozniak to consider buying a book.

After watching Guy’s Kawasaki presentation video I got sort of interested in stuff related to stratups and venture capital. Not surprisingly I met Guy’s name here and there while exploring the topic.

Everything turned out to be not as simple as it seemed at first. There are several critic articles I came across on Guy’s VC activities: The curse of Guy Kawasaki and COFI v. KOFI. Well, that once again proves that there is no gods among us and everybody can make a mistake.

Every once in a while I see situations which have fairly strait forward projections on software development (and in fact other customer oriented businesses). A week and a half ago I came to my bank to order a reissue of my MasterCard Standard which was about to expire. They said that for my being a good client they can offer increased credit line. I agreed. But this operation required me close my expiring card and open a new one. Not a big deal, almost the same process as with simple reissue. So I got back home waiting for my new card. The more so I wanted to buy some books from Amazon and pay for ACM membership.

Several days ago I came to my bank again to get my new credit card. And (what a surprise!) I got MasterCard Electronic which can not be used for online payments! I asked them: why?! They said because Electronic costs $2 whereas Standard cost $5. But it can not be used for online payments! Frankly, the only value of this card for me was that I can use it to pay online. And they knew it because I came to them some time ago to relax restrictions on Internet payments for this card. After all they could have called me to ask which card I wanted, but they did not. Bank will issue a new card of required class for $5, but I will get it a week later than I originally expected. And I’m frustrated about that.

Message here is that you should know what customer expects of you and you should match his expectations. If do not know – ask him, offer him choices, help him to choose, but never make groundless assumptions that will frustrate your customer.

Bob Walsh has published a book Clear Blogging (at Amazon). Chapter 9 “Successful Blogging” is available for download from Apress.

I’m going to use this book to make my blog kind of more successful.

Every observation you make in day-to-day life can draw useful analogies to your professional activities. Today while I was serviced by the girl at the cash register at the super store I noticed that she wanted to optimize the process of scanning product codes. She grouped units of the same products to scan their code only once and correct quantities in the register. Theoretically this should have taken less time than scanning code of each product unit. In fact, because of this “optimization” I had to stay at the register longer that it would without optimization. Grouping of the units the same products took her very long. So although the cashier made fewer operations the whole process took longer. The main lesson from this observation is that you should optimize the whole system (end to end sequence of steps) not separate steps or parts of process. Theory of constraints tells us that every process (or system) has a bottleneck and it is this bottleneck that should be addressed by optimization. So be sure to measure and keep an eye on performance of the whole system while optimizing.