How can I tell if a candidate is a good Sharepoint Architect / Developer?
I need to interview some people for a position as a Sharepoint Architect / Developer role.
While I am proficient in .NET, I have worked very little with Sharepoint, so I am unsure how to test the candidates Sharepoint skills. Do you have any suggestions for tests I can throw at the candidates ?
Please suggest questions I can ask the candidates; and please specify whether your question is "Must know" knowledge for a Sharepoint developer. Please include the answer to your question.
Answer
Ask about the architecture of SharePoint and how it works under the hood. That's much better than asking about which web services SharePoint offers. Anybody can call a web service from VS or probably even JScript, only a small number of people understand how the product works under the hood - which is much more important for an architect.
How does it integrate with ASP.NET, how are the lists persisted in the databases, which databases contain what kind of information. What kind of artifacts are stored in the file system. How does the ghosting/unghosting (I know: customized/uncustomized) work, what effects does it have.
Since SharePoint is fairly complex, you should not expect people to have excellent understanding about each area - WCM, ECM, Security ... but one ought to have an understanding how the basic building blocks - SharePoint lists, security scopes, groups, role assignments, permissions, AD integration, authentication providers - work.