HR Perspective: Technical Interviews for Mobile App & Web Developers

When someone is looking for a job, there are some objectives that he or she is looking for besides a good salary. In IT, the job demands a lot of time to solve problems on a normal basis. That can sometimes be very stressful. How do the developers survive the excess work load and still stick around? Well, that's why we have an organizational culture. So, what is an organizational culture?  How you can implement it in your interviews as a recruiter?

 

Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is a set of perceptions, feelings, attitudes, habits, beliefs and ways to interact between coworkers (Gross, 2008). In human resources, we're always looking for ways to improve the workplace to have a better work environment. For example, our organizational culture promotes these six values: exceed expectations, professionalism, teamwork, integrity, fun, and learn & adapt.

HR looks for developers who are compatible with our organizational culture. Therefore, we all need to reflect this process in our interviews.  For this objective, the tech advisors, marketing and human resources worked on a new process for the “Technical Interviews”, which includes the following:

Manual of technical skillsInform all software developers about the Company's benefitsInform about new customersPhases of the Technical InterviewBest Practices for Technical Interviewers

This new process reflects our organizational culture and the manual of technical skills contain the best programming practices that all developers must have. The new phases of the technical interview reflect our values: exceeds expectations, professionalism, teamwork, integrity, fun and learn & adapt.

This process helps us to find the best developer that the company needs.  We have many types of candidates who apply.  They could be arrogant, reserved, outgoing, friendly or shy. However, most of the candidates become very nervous about the technical interviews.  Sometimes, they don't show their full potential because they are just too nervous. They could think why they are  not good enough for this position?. It's not about all the years of experience that a developer has, but it  is about what they have done during those years. We could have candidates with many years of experience and they haven't done anything relevant, or we could have candidates with a few years of experience and maybe they have the experience developing many amazing things.

We mainly look for good developers who are passionate about computers and app or mobile development, and who are looking to learn new mobile and web technologies. They should make the development focused on giving the end users more friendly, dynamic and intuitive experience. iTexico’s developers like to work with faster, easier, and cleaner code. They are owners of their projects and they interact amicably with their customers.

Now, I'm going to give some tips to the interviewers about the process that we use at iTexico. I have asked several candidates about their experience with iTexico and other companies. Here is a list of things that they are looking for in an interview:

The interviewer has to evaluate more of the engineering skills than the theoretical part.SincerityThe interviewer has to be polite.The interviewer has tested my logical thinking.The interviewer makes me feel comfortable.The interviewer responds to my answers nicely.The interviewer has fun.The interviewer makes me feel important.The interviewer thanks me for the time that I spent on the interview.They communicate the requirements of the position and the work environment.The interview has been entertaining.

Do you have all these points mentioned above during the interviews? I encourage to do so and enjoy the interview process. It's always fun to talk to other developers and learn new things about other people. You are part of a great company, and you are helping to make that company bigger and a fun place to work! Remember, it's all about the people.

Karina Alejandra Villaseñor is an Industrial Relations specialist with more than 2 years of experience as a recruiter. She currently works as IT Recruiter at iTexico. You can contact her through LinkedIn.

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Developer's Perspective: IBM Worklight for Mobile App Development

As a mobile app developer and interested in new platforms and techniques of development, I will share with you this technology, IBM Worklight to create mobile apps:

Worklight is an open, comprehensive and advanced mobile application platform and framework used to develop HTML5, hybrid and native mobile applications.  Worklight also helps run and manage these software mobile applications.  

IBM Worklight framework is made up of these four main components:

IBM Worklight Studio.IBM Worklight Device Runtime Components.IBM Worklight Server.IBM Worklight Console.

Each one of these components allow us to manage some part of the application:

This is a plugin for Eclipse IDE that allows us to develop the code for the app.

All of these components are the SDK. This will make the code we write to work on the user's real devices.

This is the server that provides the information to the application, based on adapters’ paradigm. It gets the data access to the back-end of the app.

This is the monitor and manager of the app in its different versions and environments, adapters and push notification rules.

Provides the API that allows local JSON data storing.

An adapter is a component that is used to retrieve the data from services in the back-end server. The retrieved data by the adapter is always JSON formatted.

An adapter is composed of:

An XML file describing the back-end server information and the procedures that it performs.A JavaScript (.js) file that contains the implementation of the procedures already declared in the XML file.An XSL file, if the retrieved data from the back-end server is in XML format, the XSL file is used for the XML to JSON conversion.

The adapter can be used to make HTTP requests, execute SQL queries and more.

There are some JavaScript libraries that help with the app development.

JQuery Mobile.Dojo mobile.Sencha.

Also, the Apache Cordova Framework can help when creating mobile applications with Worklight. This framework allows the app to call native device functions from JavaScript, and even lets you create your own Cordova Plugins with Objective-C code.

Ok, let us leave the theory behind for a while…

First, you have to download and install the IDE called Eclipse.  Warning! The Worklight documentation does not demand very specific version of the IDE in every version of the eclipse.  By the time this blog is published, IBM Worklight 6 will be the latest release and it will demand Eclipse Juno v4.2.2 (SR2) or Eclipse Classic v4.2.2. You can download it the latest release here. 

The next step is to download the IBM Worklight Developer Edition Plugin from the Eclipse Marketplace. 

NOTE: You should not forget to install the SDK of each environment in which you want to deploy.

Once everything needed is correctly installed, create a new mobile app project:

Select Hybrid Application and Next:

Now, set the Application Name. If it is needed, add one of the JavaScript libraries listed:

As you can see in the screenshot, the dojo library comes with the IBM Worklight 6 Plugin.  NOTE: We will NOT add any library for this example.

Now, you can see the basic project structure

Adapters: Source code for the adapters.Apps: Source code for the apps.Server: Configuration files, libraries and Java code for the server.Components: Source code for the Shell components.

In the apps?WorklightApp?application-descriptor.xml file is where you can add environments and features to your app.  In this example, we'll add iPhone* and android environments.

*Note: iPhone or iPad, only if you have a Mac.

Select Application “WorklightApp”.Click on Add… Button.Select the environment.Click OK Button.

There are new folders under apps?WorklightApp folder, one by each environment you have added one as a common resource.

In the WorklightApp.html file that’s inside the common folder, add a button after the application UI comment:

Now inside each environment (iPhone & android folders), in the js?WorklightApp.js file, add an event listener for the click event of the button after the Environment initialization comment:

// Environment initialization code goes heredocument.getElementById("helloBtn").addEventListener('click', function(){            alert("from ");}, null);To see the results go to the Project Explorer and select your WorklightApp folder, right-click on it, select Run as option and then Build All and Deploy

Now, in your workspace you can see a new Project (an Android App Project) named WorklightExampleWorklightAppAndroid. This is the result of the deployment for Android, selecting and running it as an Android Application will compile the app and load it into an emulator or a device.

In the case of iPhone, Worklight will also create an Xcode Project for you. To open it, you must go to the iPhone environment folder inside your Worklight Project, right click on it and run it as Xcode Project, and then you can run the app from Xcode IDE.

Adalberto Gonzalez is an experienced Systems Engineer which currently works at iTexico as a Mobile Developer. Adalberto has been specializing in Worklight since early 2013 additional to the regular platforms for development.

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