Big Interview - Web Developer

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Guys I have a big interview on Wednesday and judging from the Job Description, I have come up with some possible question scenarios. A little background, this is a web developer position where I work and the post will require the post holder to carry out a major roll-out of Sharepoint within the College. Our clients are lecturers and students. I was wondering if some of you guys could provide feedback for me on answering some non-technical questions.

This post will require that you train non-technical staff on elearning software. How would you communicate technical issues to non-technical staff?

A student has phoned in to complain that they cant access their web account, they are very irate. How would you deal with such situations?

The post will require someone who is self-motivated, works on their own initiative and can cope with frequent change. Are you this person (or structured in words to that affect)?

The post will require at times some managerial responsibilities, what would you think makes a good team leader?

I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this or any other possible questions that could come up.

Thanks

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

No one guys

 

Give people a chance, you did post this late last night

 

No worries I think I am a bit over anxious.

 

C'mon. I just woke up (5:40 am here). Your questions are in normal text. Answers are in italics. Comments about how to answer are bolded italics. Good luck:

This post will require that you train non-technical staff on elearning software. How would you communicate technical issues to non-technical staff?

Almost all "non-technical staff" have some technical knowledge. I would attempt to leverage that knowledge in my training. It's important to not give the impression of "talking down" to non-technical staff, which would only inhibit learning and cooperation. Also, sometimes communicating by metaphor works; taking a subject area that the non-technical staff knows and using it as a comparision to teach technical information.

A student has phoned in to complain that they cant access their web account, they are very irate. How would you deal with such situations?

Remain calm and make sure your voice communicates that you are not upset. Apologize for the difficulties the student is having without actually stating that it's your fault. Calmly ask them to describe the situation, eliciting as many details as possible. Sometimes, directing communications on a "just the facts" basis will calm an irate person. Let the student know that you'd like to "partner" with them in resolving this issue and that by cooperating with each other, the access problem will be more likely to be resolved quickly.

The post will require someone who is self-motivated, works on their own initiative and can cope with frequent change. Are you this person (or structured in words to that affect)?

I can't write this response for you. I can tell you not to lie. If you aren't self-motivated and can't cope with frequent change, don't say you can. You'll end up in a job that you hate and feel stressed out all the time. However, if you are self-motivated and cope well with quickly changing situations, you might try citing previous jobs or situations as examples of how you handled these circumstances well.

The post will require at times some managerial responsibilities, what would you think makes a good team leader?

Again, I can't write this response for you. For all I know, you may have no leadership skills at all. If you feel you have such skills, you have two ways to go. If you've previously been in a leadership role, describe it and describe how you fulfilled this role well. If you have no previous leadership experience but have the sort of personality (confident, cool under pressure, good social skills) that would lend itself to a team leader role, describe the qualities within yourself you believe would be an asset in meeting managerial responsibilities.

 

Thanks tripwire45 and I can understand your comments on the last two questions and I have analysed them. In these cases it is best to answer this with an example that relates to the job in hand. For example, the question to work on your own initiative and can cope with frequent change could reflect on a changing situation at work where I had to make quick and decisive decisions for the good of the organisation. Maybe I had to abandon a development task because the boss required something of more importance to be carried out. I have been left on my own at work, where a senior manager requested something of importance to be undertaken. Rather than panic I did my best to resolve the situation.

 

Another question but on a more technical level

What do you think is the potential of introducing SharePoint within an education setting?

I sort of know the answer to this but want feedback. Potentially we cound create individual personalised student websites using sharepoint. Information such as their grades, course enrolements, book loans etc could all be housed in their personalised website. I am building a web part at the minute to try and get them to access their student drive from their location at home.

 

I'm kind of biased for obvious reasons but I think SharePoint would work well in that setting. It's designed for project and team collaboration so just as tasks can be assigned and workflow managed by SharePoint in a work situation, the same tools could be applied to an educational context.

 

Another factor might be that it could be easily administrated by a network administrator. I am not a network person but I would imagine that SharePoint could be easily integrated into the existing Managed Learning Environment. Potentially each department could have their own Intranet site, and allocated marketing reps could create the content simply by being trained on SharePoint? Obviously more dynamic features would fall under the control of the web team.