18F interview questions

A candidate with over 8 years of relevant experience and didn't make it to the interview stage. Their screening process is to be vetted by a set of experts not apart of the actual team you would be working with. I guess even with the right qualifications using an evaluation matrix might not surface the right candidates. Disappointing!

Overall, a positive experience. Everyone I interviewed with was friendly and passionate about the work. I appreciated being thanked for applying for public service at the end! It made my day. Some possible warnings for other developers: 1) All of the questions are geared towards backend development. The position I applied for was a Javascript position, but I interviewed with two backend developers. One of the individuals had never used Javascript and wasn't familiar with the DOM. A specific example of a question that seemed more backend related would be: "How would you design software to run an elevator". I was expecting questions more relevant to the job like: "How would you approach setting up keyboard navigation for 508 compliance". I looked at some of the websites that interviewers praised during the process, and I found that none of them had keyboard navigation built-in. I won't recommend applying now unless you are a developer for Go, Ruby, or Python since they use consistent (backend) questions for all applicants. My suggestion for 18F would be to remove Javascript for the job posting. Create another job for applicants who will be creating the websites. Ask questions that are specific to DOM performance and 508 compliance in addition to your more general software questions. 2) I found that I got rattled when an interviewer 'dug deeper' into questions that I already answered correctly. In this specific case, we had completed three layers of questioning for the topic. I started to doubt my answer since I was continuing to be asked about it. I researched the subject after the interview, and my initial answers were correct. Be careful not to lose track of what you feel is the right answer when the interviewer is digging deeper. I don't believe it was a trick, but rather the interviewer not knowing Javascript. It did feel that this was the interviewer's first attempt at interviewing, so that could have been the cause of the issue. My suggestion for 18F would be to have interviewers with previous experience on the subject matter. In this case, the interviewer was receiving questions from someone else on Slack. It seemed that the person listening in had questions that the interviewer couldn't convey. The applicant shouldn't be penalized for that. In my particular case, I would have happy went another hour with the trainer to ensure all questions were adequately asked and answered.