Interview Questions

Ummm, personally I'd be a little put off if me interviewer focused more on my ability to answer trivia questions then on my past performance.

GL
Mike

Any good programmer knows where to find answer to programming problems, not necessarily have all the details memorized.  I have to agree with Mike.  Ask about programming problems in the past and what methods the interviewee used to find the solution.

You dont want a walking Delphi Encyclopedia, you want a problem solver.  If you hire the guy that can answer all the "trivia" questions, you'll get a guy that "knows it all" and wont take direction from his boss.

Don

I agree with Don & Mike,

but,

I imagine that you just want to make sure the interviewee has 'some' knowledge.

I interviewed a graduate recently who had a very impressive CV, and had been working in a team on some major projects. They had even brought along some printouts of programs they had written. A couple of 'technical ' questions soon revealed that their knowledge was not up to much and obviously the rest of the team had been doing all the work.

They even had problems explaining the IntToStr function, which 'they' had used in the program listing which they had brought along!!!

I know this interviewee was the exception rather than the rule, and I could have found this out with some more indirect (less technical) questioning, however, the direct approach was much faster.

What I'm trying to say, is that a few people like to exaggerate/lie on their CV and that a couple of simple technical questions can quickly weed these people out.

As for some questions to ask, this would depend on the level of expertise you are expecting.

Regards

Aubs

The interviews have been done now.  I wrote 10 questions myself and set up a practical test as well.

You need to test a candidate.  As aubs wrote, the CV does not always tell the correct story.

I get a better understanding of what the person can do from a practical test than the written.  

For example
The case I had was a candidate saying that he understood ADO and told me all about it.  Then when it comes to actually writting a simple delphi app that connects to a SQL server database and opens a table he was stumped.

Yes that will do nicely.  Thanks.