CoFounder Pluckit.io, fishtree.com. Coder, technologist, product guy. Love people that wants to control their own destiny.
I have experience in JAVA, Ruby, Nodejs. TDD for the last 10 years and how to apply that to product development. Since I have been on both code and product development, i see how they go hand in hand. I can give advice on when to STOP coding and start testing.
After spending alot of time interviewing developers for many years. I think the next thing to do is to find a problem to solve. Make it open source so you potential employer can see the code thats being written. Be prepare to discuss how he has chosen this way of solving something over another..
Be passionate about the stack that he is working with also helps alot!