A cohort of mine was asking recently how he might identify a “good development resource”. Never an easy question to answer, but even more difficult when it’s being asked from the perspective of someone who is admittedly not a “good development resource” himself (aka “blindfolded recruiting”).

Here’s a few quick things that can be evaluated by a non-technical resource and are likely to add up:

Passionate/Not -People who care about their jobs (and maybe even *gasp* like their work) aren’t necessarily better/worse than others…. but it’s a pretty solid indicator.

> What is the best (work related) book that you’ve read? and why, of course.

If the answer is something nerdy, great. Something else that could be someone related would be fine too though (especially if they came up with a way to tie it in on the fly).

> What blogs/sites/podcasts do you follow (and “do you blog”)? I’d throw “how about nontechnical ones?” in here to get a better feel for the person too.

Write the nerdy ones down and ask your nerdy friends about them later. Obviously if they blog you need to be out there reading their stuff to get a sense not just for their work (if it’s a technical blog) but for their style and personality.

> What sites embody “good usability” to you? Who would you try to emulate if you were building something?

Extra bonus points if they worked on the sites that they named. After they named something – pop open your laptop and have them point out what they like (and don’t). Maybe visit a couple other sites that you like +/- don’t and go through the same exercise.

Past Experience – If you’re not able to really analyze answers to technical questions, you’re probably going to have to trust their “track record” to some extent.

> Have you worked on any publicly available sites?

If yes, again: go check them out during the meeting/interview and have them walk you through some things that they worked on. What did they do? Why did they do it?

If no, frown at them and pause awkwardly for a couple seconds… but don’t take away any points. Bust the laptop out and go to your own site – have them talk a bit about what they like and don’t.

> References Available Upon Request.

Maybe you’re the kind of guy that doesn’t normally call those people… If you fancy yourself “good at reading people” but not good at “reading technical talent”, this may be a good idea this time.

Other Stuff and Misc – Of course, you’re going to need a bunch of other stuff to ask about or this is going to be a pretty short interview (not that that’s a bad thing).

The videos for the demo (more to come) can be found out here on Vimeo.

Nextpoint also has a couple of blogs running of our own.  Both are pretty young – hosted on wordpress, still using default URLs, styles, and all that good stuff – I’m sure they’ll be evolving shortly.

The company blog (aka “Frank”) is here and will contain content from our management team.  Should be some really interesting content on the direction of the company and how we’re positioned in the industry.

Our Lab blog (here) has mostly been used for introducing and/or explaining functionality so far.  We’ll see how much it ends up to sticking to that vs having a feel more along the lines of the company blog.  I haven’t contributed out here yet but hope to in the near future.

I’m very excited to be accepting a position with nextPoint. They are the leading provider of web solutions in the legal arena and I am really looking forward to contributing to their great team.

I really enjoyed speaking with many great companies over the last month and am very glad that I was able to find such a great fit in the end.

Name’s Jim. I’m 28 and based in Sun Prairie, WI (a Madison suburb). I’ve been working in and around Java since graduating in 2000 and am making the (hopefully) simple transition into Ruby, courtesy of my new employer. I’m really looking forward to leaving the large corporate environment for a while to work with a very small team of fantastic technologists.

My intention with this blog then is to provide some combination of journal/diary/thoughts on my transition from Java in a large corporate setting to Ruby with a startup. It should make for some interesting experiences and stories. We’ll see how public I make it; how regularly I update it; and how long I maintain it.

The new position starts in a couple weeks but I’m starting to ramp up on Ruby as of today, so wish me luck and I’ll keep you posted!