It looks so easy at first to have an internal interview. And if you were in a position where the role was being offered to you, [but of course thay have to see the other candidates..], it looks really like a piece of cake…

Too easy? Anything seems to easy can become a challange, and lots of things can go wrong…Here is the list for the challenges and some tips to make the best out of you.

Challenge1:
Unlike normal interviews, there won’t be an agent, talking to you about the company, the interview, and what to expect from the interview.
Tip:
This does not mean that you should contact the HR department and get more details about the format of the interview, what type of questions to expect.

Challenge2:
* They have an idea about you before you go to the interview.
Tip:
Contact influential people:
Make sure they have a good idea about you. The people who know your performance, successful projects, and talent, may not be the influential people over interviewers. Worse than that, the interviewers may have connections with the people who does not technical backgrounds, does not understand the values you’ve added to the projects, and your talent. So, make sure, you have talked to these influential people before the interview, and get some advice after telling your inspirations and reasons why you are a good match for the position.

Challenge3:
You are applying for the same you work for. So, they will not ask the basic questions like “Do you know our company?”, which would be a great advantage on external interviews if you have a clear and complete answer.
Tip:
The advantage is that you will become from your most relevant tasks, i.e. this company. Show them how confident about your company, your knowledge about organisational functions, as well as projects.

Challenge4:
The building/room for interview will not a place you have never seen, people looking at you from the glass windows can be familiar faces.
Tip:
Before the interview go somewhere else, take a 10 minute. And enter the building as if you were interviewing for the first time.  This can cause some anxiety, but will help you to show you are excited, and you can look them from a different perspective.

Challenge5:
Characteristics questions will be harder
Tip:
Be prepared, if you had the chance to be a candidate, other [external] candidates will have probably more technical skills [doubling your years sometimes].
However, do underline that you know the environment, so there is no need for training, learning about company and the culture.
Make sure, you have prepared the answers for the characteristics questions, which will grant them you are the right candidate. Selecting 3 strong&weak characteristic relevant to the job, you need handy examples from your company as well as old ones.

It may not go well, other candidates [as they are selected from hundreds of CVs probably] can be stronger, and better fit for the position. This is not the end of the world, make sure you have a nice half an hour review about your application and why you have failed. Feedbacks will be always useful for yourself, your next application, and understanding their expectations. Do tell them, your motivation will not be less the existing motivation you have, and you value the company and your existing role.  You may never know, what is waiting for you around the corner….

Matching is a word I use for the technology knowledge and practice knowledge matching.

Knowing X,Y technologies/languages/platforms does not necessarily that person can fit into a set of software development practices, vice versa works true also.
A. If you are a market leader/first implementer technology company
If you want a .NET developer, implementing TDD; and all the interview went theoritical concept of talking, probably you have missed a couple of things during the way

You might chance of getting the right person that could fit in, but you were not aware of it…

Let’s say you are asking the candidate to write a piece of code to calculate 5! and s/he writes it. So was that all about? Writing a recursive function to calculate 5 factorial. This is the first homework/example that an undergraduate/high school level person can answer. And believe it does not tell anything about the candidate [unless the candidate takes it seriously and writes a framework for it.]

It should not be set of questions because some people are selling them, writing books, or Scott Hanselmann listed, actually not someone else’s question, it should presenting your domain, your own challenges!

Please do not ask/expect for output caching as a response to “if a page is getting lots of hits…” Ask types of caching and when to use which …

You have adversited the skillsets your team has, and the practices those you are following [either with best practices/or not].

Markhneedham argues that if you are implementing pair programming, why not you have pair-programmed interview?

I will keep the same argument, and continue:

– If you are/want implementing TDD, why not ask the developer candidate to write TDD tests beforehand the code. If you are insisting on 5! Give three pages of blank papers, and see the talent there!

– If you want to see how experienced the developer is, like how he/she can cover the code,

Ask to write some unit tests, if not all, ask her/him to list the tests s/he would do.

B. If you have one client on a specific industry or you are the enterprise company dealing with only one industry:

If you want to see how experienced on that domain/industry, ask an existing project and see how he/she would think about it. Do not ask 5!, unless you are doing lots of recursive functions, functional programming. Let’s say you are in retail, ask about how a checkout can work, how the delivery address can work best with sessions objects, or product page can benefit from new technologies like silverlight/flash, does s/he has any experience on those domains, and what does s/he thinks…

– For more senior positions, ask about the architecture for your latest project. Which patterns could be used to start a nice discussion to see the depth.

You may not need depth, the people asking questions may not be interested in details and whys, but after a fixed keyword to hear, who will stop listening after they catch that.

And HR can have hours of competency tests similar to GRE/GMAT/Belbin questions on top of that, so without seeing you, they will judge you with you test results…

I tried to tell the points where you should stay away…