Interview Questions Every Job Candidate Should Ask
June 17th, 2006Interviewing for a job shouldn’t be a one-sided activity. The person conducting the interview is expecting some line of questioning from the job candidate. Come to an interview armed with these questions and you will certainly get their attention. I interview a lot of people and the very small minority of them asks any questions at all. Asking a lot of question shows that you have a genuine interest in the job and have the initiative to get the answers you need in order to make informed decisions. Make sure to stay within the time guidelines of the interview as a courtesy.
Human Resources
- Is there a 401k? When can I start contributing? What is the vestment period?
- Am I eligible for a bonus? How is the bonus determined?
- How much vacation do I get? What is the accrual rate? Vacation is usually a negotiable item so be sure to use this as a bargaining chip.
- How are raises structured? Are they performance based? I personally couldn’t work at a place that doesn’t use performance based raises. Where is my motivation?
- How is your medical insurance structured? This is usually the only question I get asked.
- How often do I get a review?
Company
- How many employees do you have? How many did you have last year? What is the rate of attrition?
- Do you contract out software development?
- What are the growth areas for the company?
- Who are your competitors? What are the emerging markets? Be sure to research the company and ask industry-specific questions.
- What are my opportunities for advancement?
Job Specific - Any decent software shop should give its programmers the best hardware and software to do the job.
- Am I replacing someone? Why did they leave?
- How much new development vs. maintenance?
- What will my first project be? Have them describe a typical project to you.
- What kind of hardware will I get for a development machine?
- Will I have dual monitors?
- Do you have the best and latest versions of development tools?
- What is the noise level in the area I will be working in?
- What is the size of my cubicle? Make sure you see the area you will be working in.
Management - Your relationship with your manager is possibly the most important aspect of your job. Make sure your manager has the management style that fits your demeanor.
- What is the management style of the manager?
- Does the manager have a technical background? This is a really important question. A non-technical management team is a potentially bad situation. Can a non-techie affectively manage a techie?
- What is the project management methodology? Does the company use project managers? Is there any support staff for the programmers such as business analysts and testers?
- Do you have release schedules? Most places will not have a release schedule. This line of questioning will give you and idea of how organized they are.
- Do you use standards?
- Are any of your procedures documented?
- How is triage handled? Is there a help desk?
I recommend meeting with some of your peers too. Management and human resources will never give you an accurate picture of the current state of affairs but your future comrades probably will.
This is just a guide and there are a lot of different questions that could be asked. Job hunting is a chess match wrought with peril and danger. Come armed to your next interview and get the answers you need to make the right decision.
Dynamically Set Title and Meta Tags with MasterPages
June 14th, 2006I use MasterPages in all of my ASP.NET websites. I can’t even imagine having a site that doesn’t use them. If you have pages with dynamic content it is important to be updating your page title and meta tags to correspond to the page content. This is probably most important if you have public-facing websites and care about Search Engine Optimization. Thankfully there are a couple of easy ways to dynamically change your title and meta tags.
To begin, add a 3 properties to your MasterPage class (MasterPage.master.cs) to hold the values for title, meta description, and meta keywords.
public string PageTitle
{
get { return _pageTitle; }
set { _pageTitle = value; }
}private string _metaDescription;
public string MetaDescription
{
get { return _metaDescription; }
set { _metaDescription = value; }
}private string _metaKeywords;
public string MetaKeywords
{
get { return _metaKeywords; }
set { _metaKeywords = value; }
}
Next you will need to edit the head section of your MasterPage.master file to use the properties we just added.
<meta name=”keywords” content=’<%# MetaKeywords %>’ />
</head>
Finally you set the properties of the PageTitle, MetaDescription, and MetaKeywords on the OnLoad event of your page. Make sure you keep the call to Page.DataBind().
myMaster.MetaKeywords = “keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3″;
Page.DataBind();
Add Default Item to DropDownList
June 13th, 2006In many situations when I am using a DropDownList I need to provide a default option for the user. Perhaps there isn’t a relevant value in the list for them to choose or perhaps the List doesn’t apply. In these situations I like to add a default ListItem with an index of 0 to show that nothing has been selected from the list. It is very easy to add a default option to a bound DropDownList and a nice finishing touch to your page.
DataSet productList = GetProductList();
DripDownList1.DataTextField = “ProductName”;
DripDownList1.DataValueField = “ProductID”;
DripDownList1.DataSource = productList;
DripDownList1.DataBind();
//Add the default item manually.
DripDownList1.Items.Insert(0, new ListItem(”<Select One>”, “0″))
Note: Be careful with Page.DataBind(). If you call this method it will rebind your DropDownList and you will lose the item you just manually added. I banged my head against my desk for about an hour before I figured this out.
List Management with Generic List in .NET
June 12th, 2006I work with collections of objects very frequently and with version 1.1 of the Framework I would normally use the ArrayList class to manage them. With an ArrayList you are able to hold a collection of just about any type of object but there is no help with type safety. In version 2.0 of the Framework we are able to use Generics which allow us to realize type safety at compile time. Generics allow you to create a data structure without committing to a specific data type. Generics provide type safety but without any loss of performance or code bloat.
I now use the List class to manage my read-only lists. List represents a strongly typed list of objects that can be accessed through an index. List also provides methods to search, sort, and manipulate a collection of objects. Here is simple example of List usage:
using System.Collections.Generic;
…
List<Book> books = new List<Book>();
Book b = new Book();
b.Author = “Anthony Bourdain”;
b.Title = “Kitchen Confidential”;
b.NumberPages = 300;
books.Add(b);
b = new Book();
b.Author = “George Orwell”;
b.Title = “1984″;
b.NumberPages = 200;
books.Add(b);
foreach (Book book in books)
{
Console.WriteLine(book.Title);
}
List implements the IList interface which is the minimum interface required to implement a binding-capable list data source. Therefore you can bind a List as a non-editable data source. Using our previous example we can now bind this list to a data source.
Repeater1.DataSource = books;
Repeater1.DataBind();
I recommend dumping the usage of ArrayList and refactoring your code to utilize the List class.
Netvibes RSS Aggregator
June 8th, 2006I have about 30 RSS feeds in my rotation at any given time. I know, 30 feeds isn’t necessarily a lot but they can still become hard to manage. When it comes to reading my feeds I am pretty particular of my RSS reader and I seem to cycle through readers pretty quickly. Here is a brief list of the features I usually look for:
- The ability to export my feeds to OPML.
- Some kind of article preview that allows me to easily see the first few lines of the post.
- I need to be able to access my feeds from any PC with any browser. I stay away from anything requiring an installation.
- A way to categorize my feeds.
- Easy registration.
I was previously using the Google reader but it was lacking on a few features so I decided to give Netvibes a shot. Netvibes easily satisfies my minimum requirements and even offers some additional perks I wasn’t expecting. My single favorite feature is the ability to navigate Netvibes with your keyboard. Netvibes has many additional features I have yet to try and with a busy ecosystem they are always coming out with new modules. Here is an abbreviated list of modules that come with the standard setup:
- GMail, Yahoo Mail, or PopMail
- Weather
- Flickr Photos
- Writely Documents
- Bookmarks
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Ebay Account Link
- Netvibes ecosystem - This is an area that has information on new modules, popular feeds, and events.
This isn’t to say that Netvibes is without faults. Netvibes is very web 2.0 - almost too much. Every action you take is done asynchronously and at times I feel this takes away from the experience. The synchronization of the blogs operates on a timed basis and inevitability fails after my browser has been open for a few hours.
These minor complains aside I still feel Netvibes is a winner and once you are accumstomed to the Ajaxiness of Netvibes it is a really nice experience. Perhaps Netvibes is just what this finicky cat has been looking for.
