How to Hire a Programmer - Coding horror

1. First, pass a few simple “Hello World” online tests.
2. Ask to see their portfolio.
3. Hire for cultural fit.
4. Do a detailed, structured phone screen. A bit of on-the-fly coding. “Find the largest int value in an int array.” Some basic design. “Design a representation to model HTML.” Scripting and regular expressions. “Give me a list of the text files in this directory that contain phone numbers in a specific format.” Data structures. “When would you use a hashtable versus an array?” Bits and bytes. “Why do programmers think asking if Oct 31 and Dec 25 are the same day is funny?”
5. Give them an audition project.
6. Get in a room with us and pitch.
7. None of this is guaranteed.

How to Hire a Programmer