A Good Candidate Interviews the Company

A good candidate interviews you just as much as you interview them. Most interviewers think that they have the upper hand. After all, they are the ones that are offering the job right? I used to think that.

Smart job seekers are not only looking for a career boost, but also happiness in the workplace. At the end of the day I personally care more about team dynamic than that extra $50 a month into 401k.

As a interviewer clearly outline the process

For interviews you are expected to show up on time and jump through whatever hoops or tests they want if you want the job. Pretty standard stuff. However, if you, as an interviewer, don’t clearly outline the process this looks very bad in the candidate’s eyes.

As a candidate it is nice to know that I would have an initial phone interview, an in-person, a meet the staff, etc etc ahead of time. If a candidate finds themselves in a state of not knowing what is happening next and having to adjust their schedule accordingly they will move on, and quickly.

I suppose if you want the job bad enough you would navigate those waters anyway, but it reflects poorly on the organization if the process is haphazard. It makes me think as a candidate “what other areas are not planned out?” and “do I really want to work at such a disorganized place?”. These are both scary prospects as an I.T. professional.

Don’t make it too technical

You should be able to tell from the way I answer questions whether I am qualified or not. To ask some esoteric question that even you had to look up on Google makes you look like a jerk and me uncomfortable (unless that’s the purpose).

Taking notes should rank highly

Some people view a candidate taking or referring to notes as a bad thing. Note taking/referencing is a plus, not a minus in my opinion. Just by the fact that I take notes shows that I’m organized, thorough, care about what you’re talking about, and detailed.

Don’t handle the interview process over the phone

There’s a lot that is missed by facial expression, body language, and mannerisms. You really only get half the experience of what a person is like over the phone.

If I ever have the choice whether to include an interviewer on an interview panel over the phone I would avoid it as much as possible. Also, it bears mentioning that if you have have one of the interviewers conferenced in be sure that they know where the mute button is so everyone doesn’t  have to listen to their dog barking, cell phone ringing, or the UPS man buzzing their doorbell. It’s rude to the other people interviewing and rude to the candidate.

Don’t balk at salary

Give me a number to start. Make it clear. Don’t play games.

There are plenty more but these were the standout issues I came across. I am looking forward to taking these strategies to heart for future hires as, while they seem common sense, aren’t readily apparent.

To complete this demo you will need to install Xamarin.iOS here: http://xamarin.com (you can download the indie version for free).

To start I created a new single view iPhone project.

To keep it simple all the code is done in the ViewDidLoad() method on the View Controller that gets automatically created. So in the case of the example code below it’s in UIKitDemoViewController.cs.

First thing I wanted to do was change the background color to something different:

 View.BackgroundColor = UIColor.DarkGray;

Then I need to new up my Dynamic Animator class for this view:

var animation = new UIDynamicAnimator (this.View);

Next I need a shape. I chose a rectangle and set the position to upper left, a size of 25f by 25f, and a color of red:

UIView rec = new UIView (new RectangleF (new PointF (20f, 10f), new SizeF (25f, 25f))) {

    BackgroundColor = UIColor.Red

};

I then added the rectangle to my view:

 View.Add(rec);

Now for the behaviors. For this animation I wanted a push behavior. What this does is gives something a “push” along a designated vector. I chose a push mode of continuous to keep it moving and no vector for X but a vector of 1f for Y. This will in effect push the rectangle to the bottom.

UIPushBehavior push = new UIPushBehavior (UIPushBehaviorMode.Continuous, rec);
push.PushDirection = new MonoTouch.CoreGraphics.CGVector(0f, 1f);

Then I wanted the rectangle to stop at the bottom of the view “bounds”. To do this I needed a collision behavior as well which I added below. I also added TranslatesReferenceBoundsIntoBoundary designating the view itself as the boundary:

var collide = new UICollisionBehavior (rec) {

    TranslatesReferenceBoundsIntoBoundary = true

};

To make it interesting I also wanted to create a “bounce” effect. To do this I needed to add a dynamic behavior on the item and set an elasticity:

var elastic = new UIDynamicItemBehavior (rec) {

    Elasticity = 0.7f

};

So now I have a shape, a push behavior to make it move, a collision behavior set to the view boundary, and an elasticity on the shape.

So what’s next?

How about a color change to yellow for the shape when it detects the collision on the bottom?

collide.BeganBoundaryContact += (sender, e) => {

    rec.BackgroundColor = UIColor.Yellow;

};

Last, but certainly not least, I need to tell my dynamic animator about all the behaviors I created.

To do this for multiple behaviors I just pluralize the AddBehavior method:

 animation.AddBehaviors (push, collide, elastic);

That’s it. Now I have a red square that “bounces” off the bottom of the screen and changes to yellow when it hits.

For your project you’d want to split this out into multiple methods (as in DRY), but over all I hope you get the basics of some of the new things you can do in IOS 7 with dynamic behaviors.

The source code for this project can be found on Github: https://github.com/anthem001/UIKitDemo

At the time of the project inception I hadn’t had the mobile training that I received up to this point. So, being a good web developer and JavaScript aficionado I chose a JS/HTML approach.

The Framework

Rather than re-invent the wheel I choose to go with a nice little app called Kiosk Pro (http://www.kioskproapp.com/). This app handles all the heavy lifting as far as locking users into the application and is able to run a nice little local  web server (no WiFi needed). We went ahead and spent the $5 and went with Pro (as we didn’t need all the remote updating capability with Plus). An additional feature is you can drop the files right into the app with the free version of DiskAid (Mac).

The JavaScript Libraries

I used the following libraries to give it some zing:

jQuery – used this for fast development, but if performance becomes an issue I can probably switch this out for Vanilla JS

HammerJS – (don’t hurt ’em) this library is a nice library for multi-touch and gestures (think swiping and tapping) http://eightmedia.github.io/hammer.js/

iOS Overlay – neat little library to display iOS style alerts. http://taitems.github.io/iOS-Overlay/

Move.js – for CSS3 animations. This works well to animate the HammerJS gestures. Swipe left and make the screen move left. If done right it can emulate native iPad transitions. http://visionmedia.github.io/move.js/

AudioFX – JS library for sound. https://github.com/jakesgordon/javascript-audio-fx/

Final Result

The final result is a simple kids game running totally on JavaScript and HTML without having to learn Objective-C. Admittedly, probably not as performant(sp) as native, but the user experience is perfectly fine.

I look forward to seeing how the kids interact with the game.

JS iPad Game

It can be a frustrating, time-consuming, seemingly non-productive experience which can be compounded even more the bigger the knowledge gap (or “management gap” as I am calling it).

In the web world (and even the I.T. world) we casually throw out tech terms. REST, Ajax, MVC, etc. And that makes sense to each other, but how do you even approach this with management or peers who have no concept of the fundamentals, but who are the decision makers?

I know of many people in the field that suggest just forgetting it and look for another job. And, I get that. Maybe you don’t have the desire to address the problem and it definitely is the easier way through.

But, what can you do if you DO want to attempt to make it better?

Here are some strategies I’ve found. If you have some to add please share in the comments as well.

Patience
In I.T. we deal with this one all the time. On twitter recently someone tweeted about developers: “You might know a lot, but you don’t know everything”. My addition to this is if  our minds are so great why can’t we keep our own emotions in check enough to just have some patience? If we can’t do that then maybe we aren’t as great as we think we are.

Admittedly I have been guilty of this many times. I have lost my cool and felt that superiority before, but I’m aware and trying to work on it. It takes time.

Don’t Talk Down
This is a hard one too. Talk to them with compassion and give them some dignity. It will go a long way in fostering your working relationship.

Guide Them
It might be all you can do not to pull your hair out and want to run to your office and tune everyone out. Problem is you are still all in it together and the problem will just get worse rather than better.

Instead offer to have them sit down with you for a step-by-step. Offer some training. Point is if you not at least attempting to inform then you’re really not doing anything to help the problem either.

Share Their Frustration
Technology can be difficult and it’s changing constantly. Relate your experiences. Remember what it was like when somebody helped you when you were new. It might give you a little more compassion and will definitely make dealing with them better.

There is no silver bullet and I do believe there are some gaps that are too great, especially if they are unwilling or there are roadblocks such as time or just plain ability.

All I can say is give it a shot and maybe things will get better.

Sorry for the tardiness of this but here is a copy of the slide deck as well as the links to the source code on Github.

Slides: Object Relational Mapping from A to Z

NHibernate Demo Source

Entity Framework Demo Source

Massive Micro-ORM Demo Source