- When you ask open questions starting with "what", "how", "when", etc you will often get a lot more information.
- Use closed questions to make sure you understood the candidate and to clarify.
Prepare yourself, collect questions you think makes the candidate shine and feel comfortable with, no matter what background the candidate has.
Ask promotion oriented questions and prevent to ask prevention oriented questions.
Examples
Promotion: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? vs Prevention: What type of people do you feel least comfortable with?
These two questions have the aim to learn to know the candidate a bit better. The promotion oriented question gives the candidate the chance to shine in things the candidate is good at. The prevention oriented questions makes the candidate react defensive and makes it possible to only talk about negative experiences.
Promotion: What's your long-term vision? vs Prevention: What do you constantly worry about the most?
Both questions aim to find out, where the candidate wants to go and what the next career steps are, only that in the prevention oriented question, the candidate is forced to look back on negative examples.
Promotion: What does success look like to you? vs Prevention: What do you think is your biggest barrier to success?
Both questions aim to figure out, what is important for the candidate and where motivation lies, only that the prevention oriented questions sticks to the negative side. Which is why you will never figure out the positive aspects of the answer.
Ask a colleagues to assist you. Your colleagues will conduct an interview with your and will ask you the promotion oriented questions above. Try to answer them as best as possible and evaluate how you both feel about it.
Now turn it around. You are the interviewer and you will be asking the prevention oriented questions. Your colleagues needs to answer the questions as best as possible. Again ask about how you both feel about them.
There is only one upside about prevention oriented questions. Next to the chance that it makes the candidate feel defensive and bad, there might be a slight chance a candidate can turn the situation around and create a promotional situation. Statistically those candidates usually score higher in interviews.
If you use prevention oriented questions, place them well and not too much.
Example
What other less used browser APIs/functionality are there, that can have a certain impact?
Change to
What other browser APIs/functionality do you know?
You probably may know yourself what you mean, but the candidate certainly comes from a very different background and does not know you and the words you are usually use to express yourself. Therefore, try to be explicit as possible, use common known expressions and be transparent.
What is the big picture that the language has changed in the history?
"big picture" is a very fuzzy wording and needs to be explain. In worst case, the candidate needs to ask, what do you actually mean and i can easily turn around the interview process. Remember to make the candidate shine.
Change to
What impact did the language had throughout the history of frontend and backend development?