I just did a technical phone interview for a potential new hire (Consultant) whose focus has been web development.
I like to start off with the easy questions... "I don't see any consulting on your resume. Have you ever done any? Perhaps on the side?"
He ponders this for a moment... and finally says "not that I can recall."
Ok, I ask about travel... "How do you feel about travel?"
His response: "I dunno, I never have traveled. Sounds like fun."
Ook... we have a live one.
I ask a few basics, like what languages he has experience with.
When asked about his HTML skills, he replied: “Uh I dunno, they're ok I guess. Visual Studio handles all of that for me. I just move stuff around and it generates HTML.”
Intrigued, I pressed further… “Ever done anything with Web Services?”
He replied that yes, in fact, he had created one for a single sign-in login that was used by all applications, enterprise wide at his employer.
Not all that interested in how the service itself worked, I asked how someone uses a web-service in their application.
His response… “Uhhh… there’s this class you add…” *pause* then nothing else.
Curious why such a stellar candidate would choose our company, I asked why he was leaving his current employer.
He thought for a moment and said “they use .NET 1.1 and I asked them about using .NET 2.0 and their response was: Why should we do that? They just didn’t get it.”
I wanted to get it, like he apparently does, so I asked: “Why? What’s the difference between the two? Why should I, as a client, upgrade to .NET 2.0?”
He couldn’t tell me. Not even one reason.
Thank you for your time. Our recruiter will be in touch.