Talks

Interviewing Perl Programmers - Smylers
Friday, The Morgan Stanley Room, 1145, 20 mins

Interviewing for Perl Vacancies: Tips for Grilling Job Applicants

"It takes one to know one", apparently. But if you're trying to recruit another Perl programmer, how do you determine whether an applicant is up to the task? Being a Perl hacker means you often have to play a part in job interviews, despite likely having no experience of interviewing. This talk aims to help with that.

It covers:

  • musings on job vacancy descriptions.
  • things to look out for on a CV, both good points and 'red flags'.
  • testing candidates -- suggestions for written and practical tests, what does and doesn't work in testing, how to conduct tests.
  • guidelines for posing pertinent questions at applicants, and evaluating their answers.

This talk is specifically about recruiting Perl programmers, not just IT recruitment in general: it considers what are the distinguishing characteristics of a Perl hacker, and how best to spot these.