How do you check the level of work and experience of consultants?

Question

So, now I am hunting for consultants on two technologies that I know about, but have no experience. I placed ads on Craigslist, as these are two small tasks, and most likely, large companies do not want to worry and will charge a hand and a foot.

How to check that these guys are up and down? What they send me is THEM? I mean, I would like to believe that the guy who did not sign his email address did all the flash work for Guess.com and is trolling Craigslist for concerts, I just don't think it is possible.

I also have little time for this, so all I can do should be quick (so I hire consultants).

UPDATE

The problem is that this is a small company, and I am an IT department. I mean, I know enough about Flash to ask some high-level questions, but not so much. Another thing is a Mac product called File Maker Pro, which I know nothing about.

The point is to save time, so I do not need to learn technology and do it. Are there reputable companies that deal with such trifles? I guess that was the best question.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Well, you get what you pay for, and using Craigslist for high-tech hiring technologies may not be the best way to find crop cream.

The most revealing tool I have for filtering out liars and postures is a good, grueling phone screen. If you do not know anything about this technology, you have a problem. You need someone knowledgeable that you trust to drop the tires on these guys.

You can always ask them to evaluate Stack Overflow's reputation.

;)

Answer 2

Some ideas:

• Ask for links and talk to them in detail about human responsibilities.
• Ask for samples of your work.
• Use Google Code Search if you suspect that their code came from another location.

Answer 3

We have a multi-step process that you can adapt to your situation.

• A 5-minute online test where you are asked one of several questions that asks you to write a simple algorithm to solve the presented problem. FizzBuzz is a good razor for this.

• Ask for a resume and answers to five questions in the essay to feel their personality, their working habits, communication skills and genuine interest in this post. If they do not want to do this, we are not interested.

• Ask for a sample code in advance and talk about it with them on the phone screen before asking them about our technical problems. If they cannot discuss how they can improve the code or respond to the change request that we are writing, then you can bet they don’t write or understand it. We are looking for best practices, as well as their ability to discuss code with us.

• Technical issue on the phone screen. Ask questions that you really can’t go to while you’re on your phone, for example, describe the life cycle of an ASP.NET page, stop them in certain parts, and ask them to develop things like output caching.

• One-on-one with development manager (in place)

• 90 minutes practice test. (In place)

• Lunch with the development team to make sure they work well with the team, regardless of their coding abilities. This turned out to be an amazingly valuable indicator of how consultants will work.

• Face to face with the development team. We will discuss how the candidate did it in a practical test, and then spent the rest of the hour on several technical questions (not so much as they proved their technical capabilities on the phone screen), and mainly because they are softer questions about their work habits , team duamanics, best practices.

• The most important question you can ask any candidate is why they are leaving their current employer. If you want someone to be able to contribute to your team in the long run and really feel personal pride in their work for your company / project, their answer to this question is key. If they only bash their previous employer, go through. If they are looking for more money, but really love their project, go ahead. If they have peaked in their current position, consider them. Use your opinion on this, but always ask for it.

• Get feedback from everyone who interviewed him. If at least one person is thrilled with them and there is nobody who gives solid thumbs down, then they are probably a good choice. If everything is warm without special red flags, this in itself is a big red flag!

• Check the links for the people they talked to and give them a call or email.

• Google

Answer 4

If you are not sure that you can snatch charlatans yourself, you need to use someone who is sure, for example:

• Trusted Colleague / Friend / Contact
• Dear recruiting agency
• Dear Consultant

An agency or consultant will have a cost, but hiring the wrong person will also cost!

Answer 5

It looks like you have sample source code from consultants. A good way to confirm that the source code belongs to them is to look at it, find some logic that seems complicated or contradictory to intuition, and ask why it is. They should be able to answer if they wrote this :-)

Answer 6

Get links and contact them.

Answer 7

Ask them for a briefcase and make sure you contact the people who ordered some of their previous work and talked briefly. Most people don't mind you calling to check.

Only using the provided referees can mean that you are talking to someone who has been instructed to give a luminous overview.

Answer 8

In addition to requesting links and checking them, as another said, I recommend that you try to minimize the risks.

The best way to do this is to work with them in short iterations with work results at the end. In short, I mean one or two weeks, and I have something that you can try and evaluate. If you can review the code, then you can check not only what they created, but also how it is built.

Links can be complicated. Any consultant provides their most successful projects as a reference, but not their failures, and even in this case, the people working for you may not be the same or not in the same mood as in previous jobs.

Going forward on babies is always a good way to evaluate their quality.

Answer 9

If you are testing technical compatibility, you can find out if you can find a primer on technology with some questions that you might be able to take. There is a big gap between simply unfamiliar developers (who should be able to answer so easily) and non-developers. Also, stay tuned for long lists of claimed technologies (over 5-8?), Which (almost) always means someone who doesn't know what they are doing.

Of course, if you could just pay for shipping ... :)

Answer 10

As other posters noted, providing them with sample samples of their code is a good way to test your knowledge base. However, this is not always possible due to NDA agreements with companies, so do not reject them if they cannot provide anything. Providing them with links and actually accessing the links is a good way to find out information about them, but since they have already checked their links, you are likely to get a positive feedback.

Another route you might want to think of is to get them in and then give them an interview based on competency. If you can find some questions about hat products that you can answer and / or code, then they should be able to do the same. If you ask someone a question that requires code, then they should be able to answer the main question within a reasonable amount of time on your site. Just make sure the question is simple enough that you can do it yourself in a reasonable amount of time.

Answer 11

I would say the same as with any job candidate. The phone screens them, and then (if possible) conducts an interview. Ask them technical questions and ask them how they will solve your problems.

You will need to judge by their answers, evaluating whether they really know what they are talking about or not.

Remember to take their recommendations with salt. Remember that they will not give you a link to a contact that can speak poorly against them, so all this is very biased.

Answer 12

Another way to test your competence is to give them a real task that is on your plate, limited to 4 hours, and ask them to do it. If they complain that they are doing a free job for you, you still don’t want them (because they can complain). This is the best way to get it at your level, and also verify that they can do part of the job :-). This is how I got my current job, FWIW.

Answer 13

Ask them to give you a portfolio of the projects they worked on, with a brief summary of their contribution to each project.

Answer 14

Ask what their reputation rating on stackoverflow is.

But seriously, you can try to find forums for flash and filemaker to find familiar users and / or ask good interview questions on these forums.

Answer 15

A personal referral from someone you know will be ideal, if possible.

As an alternative, I agree with other suggestions for a thorough screening of the phone. If you are not qualified to do this, you probably know someone who is.

This is definitely something that is important to know and trust to highly qualified people, even if they are not the skill specialists you are looking for.

Answer 16

I personally agree that a good phone screen is good, but ideally you will find someone you can trust that they know the technologies that will be ready to help you get through the phone screen.

You may have to pay an hour or two, but if you want to go the way of cheap labor and still get some level of quality, this may be the only way.

Answer 17

A technical test is out of the question. ask them to do something trivial (no more than a couple of hours of work) and lead you through it.

Give them access to the computer and the network while they do this, as most developers would use the network as a link while working anyway ...

As for the wording of the test ... maybe the question of stack overflow for a test test?

Answer 18

• As others have said: ask for links and check them.
• You don't just ask one guy, do you? So use the ABC technique: call A and ask a few questions about the technical details. Then call B and ask them what they think of A.'s answers. What will they answer. Do the same with B and C. Then you can return to A. This should give you an idea of ​​who knows the details.
• Listen to what questions they ask you! Can they solve your question in a real statement of the problem?

Answer 19

I am sure that there are good consultants on the CL, but it is too difficult and risky to check; even if they gave you a link, as you know, this is real. And code examples can mean a lot of things. They can copy code from other sources, and yet you will not find it in the code search; or you can find pieces of code on google, but they are just good developers using an open source framework, etc.

If they are local, I definitely ask for a visit on the spot and talk to them in person. You may not be an expert in this technology, but you should know this well enough to ask some general questions.

And I think there are many sites for hiring contractors for small projects; they usually have good rating systems, search and try to do it.