Finding qualified Android developers is hard. That’s why we’re working on Crucible, the test that’ll help you find the best Android developers for your positions. In the meantime, you can use these Android interview questions to gauge how qualified your interviewees are for the positions for which you’re hiring.

Disclaimer: After each question, we provide some advice as to the relative difficulty of each question and we take our best guess at the skill level of the developer that should be able to answer that question. This advice is only our best guess. We cannot provide an accurate and data-driven evaluation of your Android candidates until we’ve finished building Crucible.

1. What is the first life-cycle method called in an Activity?

Answer: onCreate()

If your interviewee does not know the answer to this question and they’re interviewing for any position other than an internship, you should be concerned.

2. How would you start an Activity that could take a picture on behalf of your app?

Answer: Pass an implicit intent with the ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE action into startActivityForResult()

Junior’s should know the difference between an implicit intent and an explicit one. They should also know the name of the method startActivityForResult(). Middle to senior level developers might have the action you use with the Intent memorized.

3. If you started an Activity to take a picture on your app’s behalf, what’s the name of the callback method used to deliver the result of that Activity?

Answer: onActivityResult()

Any developers at the junior level or above should know this one.

4. What’s the last life-cycle method that’s guaranteed to be called in an Activity?

Answer: Depends on the version of Android. Before Honeycomb, onPause(). After Honeycomb, onStop().

This question is trickier, but developers at the middle level and above should still be answer at least part of it.

5. How do you pass data to an Activity that you’d like to start?

Answer: Put extras into the Intent used to launch the new Activity.

This is another easy one. Everyone except intern-level candidates should know it.

Ultimately, we think these questions don’t provide enough insight into the skill-level of the developer that you’re interviewing. (But we do think that they are much better than a lot of the trivia you find on other sites claiming to provide Android interview questions.) That’s why we’re working on Crucible. Once we’re done, you’ll be able to hire developers with the confidence that you’ve got the right person for your position.

Although we’re still working on Crucible, you can still sign up to receive an email notification when we’ve found an Android developer for your company.