When recruiting for IT-specific roles, it is imperative to consider more than the candidate’s technical qualifications. Soft skills such as collaboration and initiative, for instance, are often unequivocally essential, as is assessing their analytical skills and their understanding of your end service or product.
So, what makes an IT professional a good fit—and how can you spot them? Some of the related interview questions to ask IT professionals can help you identify candidates’ prowess and abilities in your next hire.
And make sure you ask a combination of situational and technical questions. Also, listen closely to their answers as well as how they say them.
6 Revealing Interview Questions to Ask IT Professionals
Here, you’ll find some viable interview questions to ask IT professionals that will help you evaluate a candidate’s behavioral intelligence, soft skills, and hard skills.
What Online Resources/Channels Do You Leverage ToPerform Your Job?
The candidate’s answer will help you determine and indicate how engaged they are with the far-reaching IT world. The majority of the tech candidates turn to sites such as GitHub or Stack Exchange when they require help with their tasks. Whereas others have their selection of sites, social media feeds, online communities, and other valuable resources as per their interests.
What Are The Advantages And The Downsides of An Agile Environment?
Various IT teams are embracing the agile approach in one way or another, the preferred SDLC technique (Software Development Life Cycle). This means multiple quick meetings and a steady feedback stream from associated team members. The candidate’s response can help you gauge their understanding of this prevalent environment, how well they adopt it, and their attitude toward communication and collaboration.
How Do You Update Your Technical Skills?
Technical professionals strive hard when it comes to keeping their knowledge base updated. Generally, they achieve this by reading forums and blogs, taking online courses, plugging away at IT projects, and joining hackathons. This IT-specific interview question will help you evaluate the enthusiasm of the particular for their profession. Also, it will open a discussion regarding professional development.
How Will You Explain Technological AdvancementsToA Person With Limited Technical Skills?
IT and technology play a vital role in almost all companies. Therefore, communicating effectively with non-tech coworkers is a must. With this question, you can analyze the candidates’ communication/interaction skills.
For example, can they avoid obscure jargon and acronyms while communicating, and how well do they break down a complex process, comparing it to common knowledge? Moreover, this question will also allow you to feel for the candidate’s comprehension of core concepts.
Are You Able To Meet Strict Deadlines? If Yes, How?
When it comes to daunting and stringent time constraints, IT teams often struggle. So, you’ll need a candidate who works accurately and efficiently when under pressure. Asking this interview question from a potential candidate/employee can help you understand how they deal with stressful situations and settings and if they can carry on with the projects’ pace at your company. Also, you can follow up by questioning if they have ever missed a deadline. If yes, how did they deal with the situation at that time?
How Do Technological Advancements Impact Your Job?
Novel technology is changing several IT roles/responsibilities. How aware is the candidate of this aspect? For instance, do they know that automated testing is a significant facet of DevOps, allowing for quicker deployment and faster development cycles? The interviewing candidate might talk about the automation platforms/tools they leverage or their challenges with big data and machine learning.
This is a great question to initiate a discussion regarding advancements and trends in the IT field and provide insights into how potential employees perceive their job over the long term.
Wrapping Up
These interview questions to ask IT professionals will help you better determine a good fit according to your company. While there are no wrong or correct answers, the communication style and the personality are essential facets when considering employing someone in your team. Remember to give enough time to the candidates so that they can ask you questions at the end of the interview. That way, it will also help you understand what matters to them.
Velocity Search Group, Inc. is an executive search and placement firm specializing in finding exceptionally talented individuals for clients in Cybersecurity and Information Technology.