One of the challenges with hiring junior people is that you can’t purely test them on their current knowledge, delivery and communication skills. You have to look for signs of potential.

Ask them questions about how they have been learning programming: what they’re excited about; what they find confusing or hard; what they’re most proud of. Keep in mind that their answers shouldn’t necessarily match your own or the ones your team would give, but they should make sense and show strong fundamentals.

In the final stage technical section I always look out for an opportunity to teach them something new, to see how the respond. I want to find the edge of their knowledge about a programming topic, tell them something they don’t know, and watch for them getting it. On the one hand it’s a great sign that they’ll learn quickly on the job, and on the other hand it means even if they don’t get an offer they leave the day having learned something 😄