Any good UML phone screening questions out there?

Question

We've got a round of hiring coming up and something that the brass wants to emphasize in the phone screen is UML experience.

Does anyone have suggestions for UML questions to ask in a technical phone screen?

I'm more of an in-person interview guy than a phone screen guy, so "normally" with something like UML I'd have the candidate knock out some simple diagrams on paper. However, I'd rather not have the candidates try to describe an UML diagram over the phone (mostly because I'd be terrible at that, and partly because I'd hate to try and judge them on their UML skills based on my napkin drawing for their description.)

How do other people phone-screen for UML?

Answer 1

Rather than have the candidate draw a diagram, you could have him interpret, implement, or find errors in given diagrams. My impression is that those who understand UML can create and understand diagrams, and those that don't use it much fail on both.

If you trust the candidate enough to not distribute the questions (e.g., this is a late interview), you may want to send him a few moderately complex diagrams by email during the phone screen and see in real time whether he can interpret them. You can send a diagram with an error and ask the candidate to find it. Or you could ask the candidate to code something specific (e.g., class definitions).

If you want to avoid sending questions, setup some web site that will tempoerarily show the diagram (E.g., via flash) but that the diagram cannot be captured without actually capturing the screen (which the candidate should be too busy to do during the interview).

Of course, you can also use a real time shared whiteboarding application and have the user scribble. Most UML in collaborative design is initially generated as freehand sketches, not with formal case tools.

Also, if you like puzzles, one way to do an informal UML interview (assuming you have real-time drawing) is to play "UML pictionary". There was a company in DC that did this at a recruiting event, where candidates had to either draw a phrase in UML, or interpret it.