Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

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a low-quality programmer. do your homework, check references, and be sure candi-
dates can back up any claims they make in regard to success and experience.
Assess Your Candidates
Qualified developers should have the expertise and the experience to be able to discuss
any aspect of the Facebook application development process covered in this chapter.
Furthermore, they should be able to expand on any of these topics with relative ease.
now, we’re not looking for perfection here. if a programmer doesn’t define ux exactly
as we do here but clearly shows that they understand that ux is the practice of design-
ing something to the benefit of the user, you’re probably in good shape.
the candidate needs to have a fairly deep understanding of these principles,
which in turn will show their level of experience, and ideally success. ask the program-
mer how she would enhance the performance of a Facebook application.
next, you’re looking for technical competence. Have the programmer show you
at least three applications they have built in the past. the applications should be live
on the Facebook platform. use these applications, and let your gut tell you whether the
performance is where it needs to be. does the navigation make sense? is there a logical
progression in the data structures or the application’s narrative?
on a more fundamental level, have some basic tests that you give to all applicants
in order to consider them seriously for the position. these should include the following:
• embed a live video feed in a Facebook profile.
• allow comments on a live video feed.
• pull some basic profile information (name, city, and zip code) from the
Facebook friends of a logged-in user account.
• Connect to a third-party data source, pull data from it, and display data in a
Facebook application.
if you have any peers or acquaintances with Facebook development experience,
ask the candidate to give you some samples of the Facebook-related code they have
written and have your friend review it. although there are many “right” ways to skin a
cat when it comes to programming, making it difficult to identify the “best” code, it is
certainly easy for an experienced programmer to identify poor programming practices.
one more thing—ask the candidate questions that will give some insight into
their work ethic and habits. Questions should be direct and clear such as “if you com-
mitted to a deadline and started to realize that hitting the goal would be a challenge,
how would you react?” You are looking for a two-part answer here. First, the program-
mer needs to communicate to you and the rest of the team that the deadline is in jeop-
ardy with some explanation about why the issues have arisen. second, the programmer
needs to indicate that, unless the situation is an impossible one, they will still work
diligently to hit the original deadline. Change is inevitable, so communication is key.