10 Must Ask Non-Technical Web Developer Interview Questions

For Web developers, technical skills may be important, however, in a company setting only technical skills are not important. A human being who comes to work for you needs to have something of substance aside from the technical parts, they need to have certain life skills to be able to be a good employee or a team member, and you would not be able to figure this out through the technical questions that are asked in the interview. Non Technical questions are important to see if the person would be a good fit for the organization and does their goal align with your organizational goals. This might seem unimportant, however, in the long run, it is very important for the culture of the organization. In this article, we first look at 10 questions you should ask before hiring a web developer for your organization. 

1. What are your career goals?

This is an important question to ask, you need to gauge what the goals of the web developer are. It is important to see what he can offer you and does his goal align with your organizational goals. It is important to see this in a growing organization, a new potential hire may have different career aspirations, and he may want to shift towards full stack development while your company may never need a full stack engineer. It is quite a possibility, he may not be willing to work in a technology stack in the future where you might want to get into, these are real possibilities, and you would not want to hire a person who would feel constrained in the organization. So it is not just true for your company, but also for the person that you get to know before hiring anyone. 

2. What are your strengths, aside from coding?

You would want to get to know them a little better, this may seem like a cliched question, however, it works. How people speak about themselves in high regard tells you a lot about their personality. You have a general idea of your work culture, your environment, and the type of work the employee must do, so you use that to build a set of strengths that will help them in performing the job, and you align their strengths with the skills that are required. A front-end developer in an interview might say that he is very good at perceiving things, and visualizing, these skills align well with their job so you have hit a home run, and you already know where to place him. 

3. What are your weaknesses?

This is another cliché question, but it makes sense as well, getting to know firsthand what the person thinks about themselves. You can sense the confidence or lack thereof in the answer, even though they are well prepared for this and will try to outmaneuver you by listing their strengths as their weaknesses, those are the candidates you don’t want to consider. You want genuine people who will tell you what they think they lack. Self-assessment by the person will help you create a better understanding of his fit into the whole culture of the company. 

4. Tell me about yourself, what do you do outside of work?

This is a good question to ask your potential employees, you know what they have done in the work avenue and you have their resume in your hand. What you would want to know is what they do outside of work. You don’t want a web developer who is only focused on work and is not doing anything else, he won’t go out to employee bonding sessions, and he won’t be there on trips. This is important in the long run for the work culture to stay healthy, you want people who are outgoing and have other hobbies aside from work to keep everything healthy. 

5. Why should we hire you?

An under confident employee is worse than an overconfident employee, but an employee with the right amount of confidence is gold. You ask the person why we should hire you and get an idea of how confident they are in themselves. You have just asked them to be open and boast, an uncomfortable position to put someone in. However, you get to know where on the spectrum they stand, if they are overconfident they will boast much more, and if they are under confident they will show. So you need an answer that will be balanced.  

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6. Why did you leave your last job?

This will give you an idea of what they want, and their likes/dislikes. For example, a web developer might say that he is leaving the job due to work culture, so you know they value work culture, similarly, if they say money, you know that the person is motivated by money, so you incentivize them to work harder, it sets the bedrock for your relationship with the employee.  

7. What did you like about your last job?

Here you see the cultural fit and an opportunity to make your company culture better, this serves as a research question for you to see what the company can do better in terms of work culture or employee benefits. If the developer says something that you think can be a good fit in your company you go for it. The interviewee will try to focus on similar stuff as your company, but your job is to see what else they can say that will add value to your organization. 

8. Why do you want this job?

You want to see if the person is interested in the job because in such a high-demand field like Web Development, people are looking at multiple jobs at the same time and it is common for interviewees to ghost the process once they find another job. So you need to see if they are serious about it or not, you would not want to waste your time or the organization’s resources on these people. 

9. How long do you want to work here?

A web developer comes and stays with the company for 9-12 months, at this time the company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the hiring process, training, and onboarding. This is not a good scenario, the employee was always going to leave because he had aspirations for higher studies or had a family obligation coming up and you didn’t know. You ask this question to save yourself from this embarrassment. You get their intentions right from the start, a person who intends to be with the company for 1-2 years should only be given tasks that give ROI in that amount of time. 

10. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Cliched, yes? Effective? Yes! This question gets you their career goals laid out in front of you, this gives you depth into their career choices as well as into what they think about their future. Your company either aligns with their plans or it doesn’t but it is not likely that you can change the company’s direction according to their goals, their goals might change and that’s what you aim for and that’s what is best in these situations.