Hiring technical candidates is a challenge. Recruiters require specific knowledge and have to run multiple tests to check both their hard and soft skills.
Hiring a Django developer is a challenge on top of the challenge. Django is a popular framework among developers, the second-most popular Python framework. Therefore, you are likely to get many applications but it makes it harder to find the perfect fit.
In this article, we are going to discuss Django developer interview questions (and answers) that help test candidates’ soft and hard skills, as well as learn how to prepare for an interview and discover additional tips on interviewing Django developers.
How to Prepare for an Interview with a Django Developer?
There are a lot of steps before the in-person interview even begins. Let’s remember the essentials that lead up to that moment:
Writing and Posting Job Listings
If you are willing to attract as many applicants as possible, you have to come up with an attractive job listing and post it to the channels where Django developers are.
Apart from standard information about the company, responsibilities, requirements, and benefits, you can also add how the developer’s job will influence the company, what kind of team they will be working with, and their values.
You can post jobs on LinkedIn, Indeed, Dice.com, Crunchboard, GitHub, StackOverflow, etc.
Resume Review
During the review stage, you should look at whether the candidate worked with the language long enough or at least possesses adequate education if you are hiring a trainee or a junior: look for experience, side projects, course projects, etc. Personal projects will also help you define whether the person actually has a passion for what they are doing.
It is also important to look at whether the candidate personalized the resume for your organization, whether there are any typos, and how well it is organized. It will tell you about their interest in your company and their level of attentiveness and organizational skills.
Online or Phone Interview
This small and quick interview is designed to understand the personality of the candidate and to see whether they will fit into the company culture and their team. At this point, it is just you and the candidate. You should invite them for a proper interview with other team members if you are confident about the personality fit.
Sending Interview Invitation
At this stage, it is important to be considerate of the candidates’ time. It is not recommended to set a hard date, it is better to send them your availability and let them choose the time that works for them.
After you have chosen the date, you can send them the calendar invite with the link to the interview or the address. You can also send a reminder about the interview one day before or ask them whether they will actually come.
What Django Coding Interview Questions Should You Ask a Django Developer?
The pre-interview stages are quite straightforward and common for many professions. However, it is the interview that can make you nervous since there are many Django interview questions you need to ask to check the candidate’s knowledge.
Here is the list of Django interview questions for freshers, entry-level and senior professionals.
Explain Django Architecture
The Django architecture consists of the model, view, and controller. Model is the data that the website works with: it can be a table in a database, a JSON file, etc. Model processes information before sending it to the view. The view displays the data from the model, it is something that the user sees. Lastly, the controller connects the view and the model, deciding which view to display and how, how to respond to the user’s input, etc. It also has templates.
Explain the Django Project Directory Structure
The Django project directory structure contains the following:
- Manage.py: a command line that deploys, debugs, and runs the application. It has code for runserver, or makemigrations or migrations, etc.
- _init_.py: this file’s function is to signal that the directory is actually a package
- setting.py: it is the main file of the app that adds all the applications and the middleware application present
- urls.py: it handles all the URLs of the application
- wsgi.py and asgi.py: it works with the WSGI or ASGI servers to host the app
What Are Templates in Django or Django Template Language?
A template in Django is a text file written in HTML, CSS, and Javascript which connects these languages with Python, meaning the back-end logic. It helps create dynamic HTML pages.
Explain the MVC pattern in Django. What’s peculiar about the MVC model in Django?
The Model — View — Controller software architecture pattern separates data presentation from the logic of handling user interactions. Thus, it’s one of the best ways to create client-server applications, as all of the most effective web frameworks are built around the MVC concept.
What Key Features Are Available in Django?
Django has the following features:
- Excellent documentation
- Optimized for SEO since it maintains the website through URLs rather than the IP addresses on the server
- Highly secure since it covers the loopholes by default
- Rapid development since Django completes numerous tasks, back-end in particular, on its own
- Versatile
- Highly scalable
How are requests and responses processed in Django?
The requests are processed by different middlewares like security or authentication, then it goes to the URL Router which looks for a matching URL. The corresponding view function is called and executed. Then the response is formed, processed by Django Templating Engine, and sent.
How do you connect your Django project to the database?
It is done in the setting.py. In the databases section, you have to write down the engine, name, user, password, and host. Then we have to use a connector library and run the migrate command.
How to view and filter items from the database?
You need to utilize ModelName.objects.all() to view items in the Model and ModelName.objects.filter(field_name=”term”) for filtering the items.
What caching techniques can you use to improve Django performance?
There are different caching techniques in Django:
- Memcached, the native caching system, which stores data directly in memory instead of the database
- Database caching, the data is stored in the database
- Filesystem caching, saves the cached data as a separate file
You can also cache data at different levels: template fragment caching (you have full control over what to cache), per-site caching (for backend caching), and per-view caching (caching the output of individual views).
What command line is used to load data into Django?
The command line Django-admin.py load data will search the data and load the contents of the named fixtures into the database.
What are the different inheritance styles in Django?
There are three of them:
- Abstract base classes: parent’s class holds information that you don’t want to type out for each child model.
- Multi-table Inheritance: each model in sub-classing has its own database table.
- Proxy models: it modifies the Python-level behavior of the model, without changing the model’s fields.
Briefly explain Django Field Class
Django Field Class determines the database column type, the default HTML widget to assist while rendering a form field, and the minimal validation requirements.
When can you use iterators in Django ORM?
Iterators are used for traversing an object in Python which implements the iterator protocol. It works well for processing results that take up a large amount of available memory (lots of small objects or fewer large objects).
What are Django signals? What are their key components?
Signals are designed to allow certain senders to notify a set of receivers that some action has taken place. It ties events with actions. It works on components of senders and receivers.
How can you customize the functionality of the Django admin interface?
You can customize the Django admin interface by ModelAdmin, it has more than 50 customizations. However, you can also change it completely by using different templates. The admin interface is a set of templates and you can change those as much as you need.
Does Django support multiple-column Primary Keys?
No. It only supports single-column primary keys.
Read also: Top Python Interview Questions.
How to Assess the Soft Skills of a Django Developer Candidate?
Interview questions on Django should not be the only thing you check during the interview. After all, everyone can learn how to write code but it does not mean that they know how to face challenges or work in a team or organize their work. Soft skills are essential if you want your development project to be successful.
Here is the list of interview questions for a Django developer to help you evaluate soft skills:
- Have you ever experienced a delay when working on a project? How did you explain this to your client?
- Have you ever been asked to take a different coding approach that didn’t align with your initial choice? Which steps did you take?
- Have you ever miscommunicated with an engineering manager, superior, or team member? How did this get resolved?
- Describe a time when you collaborated on a project that went wrong. How did you fix the errors?
- Can you explain what you don’t like about Django? Now explain some of the advantages of Django.
- Can you share an example of an idea you believed in and had to push hard to convince others to adopt? Why did others resist? How did you convince them?
- Imagine I am a 7-year-old who knows nothing about programming. Explain Django to me in less than 3 minutes.
- What’s more important to you, getting the work finished on time or making sure it’s of a high standard? Why?
Read also: Django vs Ruby on Rails Comparison.
Additional Tips on How to Effectively Interview Django Developers
Here is the list of some more do’s and don’ts of the Django developer interview.
Do
- Prepare all your Django interview questions and answers for experienced candidates in advance, including some spare ones
- Let candidates ask questions as well and be prepared to answer them
- Keep in mind how your ideal candidates should be but have things you are flexible on
- Read the candidate’s resume and cover letter before the interview to avoid asking the questions that are answered in there
- Take notes, especially if you have a lot of candidates in a row
- Pay attention not only to the answers but to the way that the developer presents it
- Bring a technical expert with you if you do not know Django
Don’ts
- Ask questions that offer only yes or no answers
- Ask the overly complicated technical Django advanced interview question – leave it for the test task
- Create a hostile and stressful environment
- Not reach out to the candidate with feedback after the interview
- Get distracted by other messages
Looking to Hire a Top-level Django Developer?
Hiring a Django developer can be complicated, considering how many of them are out there. At Uvik, we have already pre-selected the most skilled ones and we will narrow down the search even further to accommodate the needs of your specific project.
Our Django developers have already passed technical and language tests and we evaluated their soft skills to find the best fit in what matters to you the most. Do not hesitate to reach out and find a skilled Django professional to join your team!
Final Thoughts
One of the most important things in a Django developer interview is thorough preparations: know your specific requirements and know what Django basic interview questions to ask to see if the candidate meets them.
Another important rule is to stay within your competence. If you know nothing about programming, either bring a senior developer with you or let someone else evaluate the replies to Django interview questions for experienced people. After all, hard skills matter and if you can’t test them, it is better to stay out of it. It will help you and the developer to save time and irritation.
Need a developer? Hire Django developers from UVIK. We can also provide Django consulting services for your project.
