Testing HTML/CSS/Javascript skills when hiring [closed]

Answer 1

At my company we don't work with tests and the portfolio is more important, especially because we tend to look at the candidate's personal motivation and passion for doing front-end development.

But if I should give the candidate a test before hiring, I would go about it this way:

Hand over a print-out of a photoshopped web page representing a clear semantic component tree underneath. Ask the person how he or she would come to a result in html. Just ask him or her to think out loud. What goes through one's head when seeing a page, knowing it needs to be developed.

Then it comes down to the approach the candidate takes.

Choosing the best available markup for each specific html section is one (important) aspect, but can be mastered with experienced people around to guide a new employee. Being able to properly break down a design into its semantic components, identifying sections and separating primary and secondary content from navigation is not math or science and therefore hard to test. But a conversation about the approach of breaking down a page might separate experienced people from beginners.

But as I said in my first line, we usually ask for what kind of web-related work a person has done in his or her free time, such as a blog, game or demo. If done anything, the person usually was really good at front-end development or was eager to learn and adapt.

Answer 2

Ask for a portfolio, and then review it with your team. That takes care of posers and people who "don't handle interviews well."

Other than that, I'd present them with something relatively simple to mock up and a laptop and say 'have at it.'

Maybe ask them what they like most about web design today, and what they hate the most. Ask them about their opinions about what is on the horizon (HTML 5, IE 8, Chrome, etc) to see if they keep abreast of what's coming out.

Ask them if they have a favorite JavaScript framework and why. Maybe have them code something in JS a la the [in]famous fizz buzz problem.

Answer 3

Thanks for all you're answers so far. They're definitely good advice. I'm not ready to mark one as accepted though. What I was really looking for were concrete tasks that a front-end developers need to be able to produce in a test environment. In other words, what is FizzBuzz for CSS?

I do agree that a solid portfolio and the ability to speak intelligently about the subject will probably minimize the importance of a test. On the other hand, I think we all know candidates who are very good at talking big, but when it comes down to actually demonstrating practical knowledge, they fall short.

@JonathanHolland - I tend to disagree. HTML/CSS is certainly easily learned, but the knowledge gained from a few quick tutorials is nothing compared to someone who has spent years doing layout. There are lots of techniques and practices that a good CSS dev can bring to the table.

@roenving - Perhaps I was redundant. By "pure-css", I meant table-less. I also meant table-less in the sense of not using tables as a layout methodology. However, this is not the question for a div-vs-table layout discussion. Try here. Although I believe that most employers these days are going to be asking if a dev can do layout without the use of tables (as a methodology).

Answer 4

I can suggest you online test, that includes HTML, CSS and JavaScript together.

http://tests4geeks.com/test/html-css-javascript

It has 60 questions (20 for each subject). And you will recieve the report via email, when the candidate finishes the test.

Answer 5

"

Obviously, table-less semantic HTML and pure CSS layout are probably the key skills.

"

I don't understand that sentence ...

Do you really mean that it is better to do what is a simple task using tables in a complicated manner just to avoid using tables ?-)

Table-o-phobia is just as hard a disease as making large-scale websites without serverside assistance ...

Of course the table-hells of the last decade isn't interesting, but a lot of tasks is really stupid to complete without using tables ...

Use the html-element which easyist completes the task, no matter which tagnames it uses !-)

-- and I don't understand what a 'pure css-layout' is; I never figured out how to create an html-page without html-elements to host the layout in the stylesheet ...

Answer 6

When I interview people for a position of Client-Side developer I try to figure out:

1) Understanding DOM (what is that, how is it related to HTML etc)
2) Understanding XML/namespaces
3) Understanding JavaScript (object-oriented? what otherwise)
4) Knowing approaches to componentization (XBL, HTC) - plus
5) Understanding OO principles
6) JavaScript closures
7) Memory leaks in browsers

The only simple test case I give right away:

<script type="text/javascript">
var a = 1;
</script>

I suggest interviewee to explain in technical terms that line.

And I also check on overall awareness of the current state of the Web technologies, among other questions I suggest designing a web-browser where interviewee is suggested to pick technologies he would put into his brand-new creature, suggest ones that might be missing from the current client-side platform.