How to find a junior-y middle programmer for a job?

Question

Personnel Management

Good afternoon.

A brief digression into the problem.
It happened that after I joined the company, the main developer left.
I was left alone from the caste of programmers. For some time I have been pulling the company, but orders have grown, and terms have decreased. Therefore, we decided to find a worthy candidate. The problem is that I myself am a junior, and the candidate must have knowledge and experience superior to mine.
How can I determine that a person corresponds to the middle level (unless, of course, this is a state of mind, as many candidates have)? Maybe some tasks, questions.
Advice on how to conduct an interview in this perspective from top to bottom is welcome.
And do not give the candidate the impression that this is not respect for him, he is being interviewed by a person with poor knowledge?
Job Information:
Required knowledge: php, javascript, html, css, angularjs, mysql, yii, jquery, mvc, oop
Thank you for your answers.

Answer 1

If there is no way to invite from an acquaintance ...
I would ask him to solve a couple of small problems that you recently solved and that took you more than, say, an hour. Not for writing code and tests, but for making architectural decisions. If he keeps within 10 minutes and the decision is adequate, he is yours.
Something of the type: there is a catalog of goods (plain table), say, for 1,000,000 entries. Users on the site vote for each product and the table with products is constantly updated. How to calculate the ratings in such a scheme so as not to drop the entire system.
Sit down and discuss. Bet. :)

Answer 2

In addition to the advice of previous speakers, I would look at the number, frequency and completeness of commits, according to arbitrary repositories with which he had the good fortune to interact in one time period, at the level of the main developer - if he shows any arbitrary solution and can correctly explain his decision in a simple language so that you can understand, then everything is ok.
The meaning of such a task is that not every senior / middle developer wants, loves and knows how to share knowledge without overloading beginners with all his wilds in his head. Some do not like the educational process and documentation so much that they talk with everyone “who is lower in the caste” through the lip - it is not beneficial for you, and for the employer, because. in such a way a productive employee can be taken, but who ties all the levers of control on himself, becoming indispensable. :)
In the event that from his sent works, which you had previously read before the interview, he easily explained the moments that were incomprehensible to you - by commits to projects in one time period, it will be clear how much code a person can squeeze out of himself and in what time frame. This way you can estimate his approximate productivity by comparing it with yours. If the code seems to be not enough for you, ask what else he was doing at that time.
I would ask him how interested he is in third-party technologies: languages, design tools, something else - if he is not interested, and he cuts only on his own topic (for me personally), this is a bad sign. In my practice, such people have only one right decision - their decision. It’s easy to check - after he explains his piece of code, or a moment of architecture, unceremoniously declare: “I noticed an error in you here - can you tell me the bottlenecks in this solution?”.
But we must remember that there are no only right questions that will lead you to unambiguous confidence about whether the candidate is right in front of you or not. It is necessary to look comprehensively, and the best way to check the ability to work is a trial period. Usually the ability to work and motivation is shown in the first days. :)

Answer 3

You post a vacancy, select candidates according to the requirements, you also indicated in the vacancy that you have your own projects (do not forget that it could just be a written module, plugin, extension for some kind of engine, CMS, etc ..), at the interview you open or study the project before the interview (namely, the code that he wrote himself), make notes. At the interview, you review the code and ask WHY they did it. You can also send candidates a task (task) that you once did successfully and discuss it at the interview.
And to help yourself, google Best Practice for your technologies, and also ask questions on this list.
PS Questions about the use of technologies are also necessary, otherwise it will suddenly turn out to be middle, but does not know how to create (update) an environment for junior =)