Let me introduce myself. My name is Noémie and I’m the executive assistant at Kaam and Roffler. I support our President Gabriel in the day-to-day running of the agency. Today, we thought it would be fun to write a new article about a member of our team; lucky you, today I’m going to tell you about Christina.

You’ll ask yourself “Who the hell is Christina?“, “Why an article about this girl?“.

Christina is a very talented web developer of German origin who works with us. She joined the agency last September and has worked on a number of front-end web development projects (including accounts for Maje, Marvellous Island Festival …).

The purpose of this article is to share her experience as a foreign developer with our agency, and her feedback after her first months working in Paris with new French clients. Ready? Ok, here we go!

Say hi to Christina!

Christina is a web developer and I wanted to interview her in order to know how she feels in Kaam and Roffler agency but also to learn more about her.

Hello Christina, how are you today ?
I’m fine thank you Noémie.

So today I want to do an interview with you, about you. So, can you introduce yourself to our readers? To start you can introduce yourself and tell us what do you do in life.
I’m Christina, I’m German and I live next to Düsseldorf. I’m 22 years old. Today I’m in the 4th year of a web school. In Germany it works with semesters. So I’m in my 7th semester. I study corporate design, animation, editorial design…

Ok, I was asking myself, how did you know Kaam and Roffler? Because it’s a little agency and how did you find it?
Oh! I found Kaam and Roffler on Indeed. In fact I wanted an internship in France because I have a friend who wanted to do an internship in France. So I said to myself “Oh why not doing an internship in France? I love France” (laughing).
I wanted to improve my French. So, I sent lot of applications and Kaam and Roffler was the first agency who answer me.

Oh! It was a great decision! So, working in France was a choice for you?
Oh yes! It’s my choice! I love this country and I do not regret having come to do my internship here!

Can you tell me about differences between working in France and working in Germany?
Mh … (she’s thinking) I don’t see many differences between these two countries. Maybe holidays? In fact in France there are more constraints than in Germany. I have an example, in Germany nobody works during all public holidays while in France people can work during the public holidays.

Oh I see, it’s still a little bit different. Was it difficult for you to adapt?
I think it was easy for me, because I speak good english and everybody speaks english. So I think it’s not difficult for someone from another country to integrate France if you speak English. And I think my French is getting better. (laughing)

And tell me, would you like to work in another country, and if it’s the case why ?
Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe the United Kingdom but I don’t know. I prefer France, it’s really my favorite country in Europe. I don’t want to go far like USA or Australia. No I prefer to stay in Europe.

If you had the chance to do it again, would you ?
Oh yes! I like my internship and I’m so proud of me! It was a good decision.

And tell me, how this experience changed you?
This experience changed me. In fact I’m more independent than before. People who worked with me, helped me when I met difficulties.

How do you imagine your life in ten years?
I think I will live in Bretagne because I love this area! And I would like to work in the world of design like to create animation website.

So, thank you Christina for this interview, I hope that you will succeed in your projects. And I’m happy that I met you during my internship.

So it’s me, Eva, the agency’s Community Manager, who’s inaugurating this new category!

#Ambassadeurs

What could be better for a community manager (sorry, a CM) than Internet users talking about their brand? We love you guys !

#Billet

No, we’re not talking about a Paris/New York round trip (but we’d love to). A post is an article that has been written, usually for a blog.

#Clichés

Ah, the clichés about Community Managers… Between those who think that CM = I work on the Internet = geek = I know how to fix the printer on the^3rd floor, and those who think that CM = I work on the Internet = geek = I know how to fix the printer on the 3rd floor.

#Dab

Because when you publish something that works well, you do this:

#Emojis

At Kaam and Roffler, we love emojis (and GIFs). For the fun of it, of course, but also because inserting emojis into tweets increases engagement by over 25%, and increases the number of likes and shares on Facebook. So, what are you waiting for?

#Famille

Because when you’re a Community Manager, your family wonders “But is that a real job?” and tells you “Don’t you want to work instead of spending your time on Facebook and Instagram?”

#GIF

 Quite simply

#Humour

At the agency, we try to adopt a fairly friendly tone when speaking to you. As a result, we often use humor to get our message across. Because a CM is first and foremost a human being, who has a duty to be close to his or her community !

#Idées

Maintaining social networks requires constant monitoring and brainstorming, in order to be creative and innovative.

#Musique

I always listen to music when I’m looking for inspiration, it helps me get my creative juices flowing (we’ll have to think about making a playlist of what we listen to at the agency!).

#Outils

Because, yes, a CM doesn’t just spend his time playing around on social networks. We also need to measure the performance of our publications, using statistics and reach calculations.

#Plume

To be a Community Manager, you need to have a very good pen, and therefore excellent writing skills, because there will always be a web surfer to remind you that spelling… Well, that’s not how you spell it.

#Réputation

As Community Managers, we are the guarantors of the reputation, and more specifically the e-reputation, of the company, agency or customer we represent.

#Stagiaire

Many people mistakenly think that Community Managers are all trainees! However, only 20% of current CMs are trainees, as many companies have now realized that this is a profession in its own right.

#Troll

Trolls are the bane of every Community Manager’s existence. If you’re from another world and don’t know what a troll is (because we’re not referring to Harry Potter here), it’s a malicious (but sometimes a bit funny) little human being who runs rampant on the Internet and social networks in particular. He’s here to sting with comments just to provoke reactions and laughter behind his screen at the chaos he’s caused (and that we’re trying to manage as best we can).

#Vocabulaire

“I’m going to buffer at 2pm to get as many RTs and shares as possible, and tomorrow we’ll be pinning and liking on insta.”

Don’t you get it? It’s normal, don’t worry.

#XEva the warrior

Because when you read some of the comments on social networks, you have to have your heart in your mouth.

#Yolo

Because I didn’t have any ideas for this letter. So yolo.

#Zzzzzzz

Because a Community Manager sleeps! Yes, it’s a job where you have to be reactive, but we don’t work 24/7, we’re not robots. And you know what else? We can even go on vacation. 

Hello you,

Whether you’re a CTO, a project manager or just in charge of recruiting developers for your tech team, you’re often faced with this question:

How can you quickly determine whether a developer is a good fit for your team?

After working as a trainer for Octo Technology, CTO for the startup Modalova and finally CEO of my own agency KNR Paris, I’ve had the opportunity to interview a large number of developers from all backgrounds. Some were graduates of prestigious schools, others self-taught; some were young, others older; men and women.

Over the course of these interviews, I came to realize that some candidates with “perfect” CVs didn’t actually know how to code; they had some knowledge of the subject, but I didn’t see them as real developers. So I set up a “roadmap” for conducting my technical interviews, a checklist of things I needed to check during the interview before considering integrating a profile into my team.

This roadmap enables me to eliminate on average 80% of candidates who, despite having a very good CV on paper, don’t have the necessary skills to join my teams.

But Gabriel,” you might ask, “how is your roadmap going to help me conduct MY own interviews? Maybe I don’t have the same expectations of my developers as you do!”

Well, reader, you’re absolutely right. That’s why in this article I’m only going to talk about the technical aspects that enable me to separate the good developers from the not-so-good (not to say bad) ones. Developers, who for me are not yet developers. Developers who, in my opinion, won’t be able to produce quality code that can be used in production without the supervision of another, more experienced developer. Let’s just say that developers, whom I consider to be “less good”, will find it difficult to be autonomous, to make proposals and to produce bug-free code.

Ok, let’s get into it!

The famous Fizzbuzz test

The Fizzbuzz test is a relatively well-known test for developers. Simply knowing that this test exists is proof of a certain level of computer literacy; but not knowing about it isn’t necessarily prohibitive. For example: I didn’t know him when I joined Octo Technology.

The statement of the Fizzbuzz test is quite simple: the developer is asked to write a code (I usually leave the choice of language to the candidate) to solve the following problem:

Let’s take a list of numbers; let’s keep it simple, let’s take positive integers between 1 and 1000 (here we’ll keep it simple so that the candidate doesn’t waste time thinking about the type of variable to use if he decides to take the test with a strongly typed language, such as C).
For each number n in the list, we want to perform the following operations:

• if the number is divisible by 3: Fizz is displayed
• if the number is divisible by 5: Buzz is displayed
• if the number is divisible by 3 and 5: Fizzbuzz is displayed (hence the name of the test)
• otherwise: the number
  n
  

And that’s all there is to it; the test looks simple enough, and indeed it is. But I found (to my horror) that around 70% of the candidates I interviewed were unable to pass this simple test. Some were even in engineering school, practically graduated, with 5 years of “web development” on their CVs; but couldn’t pass this simple test. It makes you wonder what they learn at school…

The first step is to see if they can pass the test. A good developer should be able to produce drinkable code in 5 or even 10 minutes, may encounter a bug when testing his code with the number 15 (divisible by 3 and 5), but should find the solution in less than 5 minutes.

Now, if the person doesn’t pass the test, they’re disqualified as far as I’m concerned. I think this kind of problem should be child’s play for a developer who offers to develop for you, carry out your project or join your tech team. Admittedly, the stress of the interview can also work to the candidate’s disadvantage, causing them to lose their nerve: that’s why it’s important to reassure them: this test is simple, there are no traps, the aim of the game is to keep things as simple as possible. Under these conditions, if your candidate needs 30 minutes to come up with an acceptable code, it’s NOGO for me.

function fizzbuzz($liste) {
  foreach($liste as $n) {
    if($n%3 == 0 && $n%5 == 0) echo 'fizzbuzz';
    elseif($n%3 == 0) echo 'fizz';
    elseif($n%5 == 0) echo 'buzz';
    else echo $n;
    echo "\n";
  }
}
fizzbuzz([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 15, 20]);

Now you have my attention

OK! Congratulations, your dev has passed the Fizzbuzz test, so he knows how to program.

The idea now is to try and estimate its sensitivity to the beauty of clean, uncluttered code that respects the rules of single-responsibility.
To put it simply, in the code example proposed above, all the logic in our code was in the fizzbuzz function. Now, in computing, we like to cut up a program so that each piece of code has a unique role (the principle of single-responsibility). As you explain this principle to your developer, ask him if he can see a way to improve his code to make it more readable, while respecting this principle.

Here, we try to see how the developer responds when asked to “improve” his code.
Many developers will confuse code improvement with code optimization. When we talk about optimization, we’re talking about increasing the performance of a code; for example, making it faster and less resource-hungry. It’s all very well knowing how to optimize code, but I think that with the machines we have today, saving a few milliseconds on the execution of a simple program is less important than it used to be.

But I digress! So we ask our developer to improve his code. By improve, I mean make it more beautiful, more readable, more Charlie-able, more likely to be taken over by another developer without them thinking WTF when they read the lines of code, easier to debug and above all easier to modify. That’s what I call good code, beautiful code.

So ask your developer to improve his code; if he starts talking about optimization to make the algorithm faster, just tell him that’s not what he’s being asked to do; we’re just looking to make the code more beautiful.

Here, I generally expect the candidate to output the logical part of the code used to determine whether a number X is divisible by a number Y. This would make the code more DRY ( Don’t Repeat Yourself ) ; and also improve its readability. We’ll also pay attention to how it names its variables and functions. Code with variables named a, b, c, x, y is synonymous with a developer who has never really worked in a team.

function est_divisible($nombre, $diviseur) {
  return (0 === $nombre % $diviseur);
}

Read between the lines (of code)

And there you have it, the few lines of code that allow a developer to prove to me that he can actually code. But is that enough to set them apart from the other candidates? Well, no…

A good developer is also (and above all) a developer who masters his tool.

I usually ask candidates to bring their computer to the interview, so that they can use the tool they should be comfortable with. During the fizzbuzz test, I’m going to observe how they use the said tool; use of an IDE, use of keyboard shortcuts; do they use their mouse/touchpad too often ( spoiler alert: this is a bad sign ); do they type quickly on the keyboard, with two hands; using several fingers. In principle, this gives me a fairly general idea of the candidate’s ease of use of the tool, which often goes hand in hand with his or her skill level.

So that’s it; am I hired?

Not yet, young padawan. This article deals only with the technical side of interviewing. I’ve already turned down candidates who had passed the Fizzbuzz test with flying colors. See you in a future article where I’ll explain how we recruit at KNR and why technical skills alone are not enough to make a good candidate.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when the article is released!

Are you a CTO, project manager or even a developer looking for a job? Tell me what you thought of my roadmap in the comments below!

Thank you for having succumbed to the temptation of reading this article with its catchy title (putaclic, I hear you say).

At the risk of disappointing you, this Blog post has no content. None. None. Ningún. 何も. (and at the same time, I warned you)

No tutorials, no howto’s, no great storytelling about Kaam and Roffler‘s amazing adventure, no detailed workflows, no über-efficient management techniques we use every day to work with our team.

In fact, this article has only one merit, only one claim, and here it is:

This article is. It exists, and that’s all. #philosophie

What’s the point, you might ask? None. This article is a placeholder, an excuse not to launch an empty blog, even if this article is devoid of content.

Here we are.

Transition, without pressure

Well, now that you’re here to read me (thanks, by the way!). And since I’m here, writing, I can tell you what you’ll find on this blog in the weeks to come (because yes, other exciting articles are being written, re-edited and even re-read right now).

Who am I? (hello, personal branding)

First of all, who am I? To make a long story short, and so as not to lengthen this article which is already so long in size, but so empty in content, I’d say that I’m an enthusiast.

Not passionate about writing, I think you’ll have gathered by now; but passionate about what I do.

You’re on a blog that, in addition to being awesome, can perhaps be seen as an extension of the DNA of the Kaam and Roffler company, which my partner Antoine Roffler and I founded together in 2016. The articles on this blog will be written by ourselves (we promise!), but it’s possible that some of our team members will indulge in the joys of writing and concoct a few crisp articles for you from the tip of their pen.

Kaam and Roffler, kesako?

Kaam and Roffler is a digital agency. We’re passionate about digital, digital and web professions. We’re also convinced that digital is a real force, a real tool that, properly used, can work wonders.

Our aim is to help our customers propel their business forward thanks to digital technology. To do this, we offer our customers services that are tailored to their needs and easy to use, helping them to achieve their objectives, while always taking care of the user experience.

So we’ve helped our customers in areas such as website creation or redesign, helping them sell products or services online, marketing strategy, graphic content creation or even providing more technical training on new technologies.

(psst: our official website is here)

Why a blog?

With over 10 years’ experience in helping, supporting and accompanying a multitude of customers, we’ve realized that many(but really many) questions or issues come up quite often. So we decided to create this blog with the aim of addressing these questions and issues, providing the most complete and accurate answer possible. We rely on digital principles, but above all on our experience.

On this blog, you’ll find answers to questions you’ve probably already asked yourself, questions you’re asking yourself and which are blocking you, or questions you might have to ask yourself in the future. By creating this blog, we hope to be able to help you as best we can, and bring solutions to your problems, whether they be graphic, web development, SEO, marketing, team management…

Doggy-Bag

In a nutshell

• we’re passionate about digital
• for over 10 years in the business, we’ve seen a lot of people and a lot of things
• we like to share our knowledge

Thanks again for reading (really, thanks!). One more thing: we’ve included a small insert ↓ down the page so that you can leave us your email address and be notified exclusively when we publish a super-interesting article on the blog. Don’t hesitate, it’s free and it won’t bite me, I promise!

Cheers,