Success depends on how well teams and individuals contributes and execute the strategy. It comes down to people, who you let in (and who you let go).
- HR check as first level: no in depth CV reciting. Targeted questions for behavior:
- what did you work on the hardest in the last two/three years? How did it go?
- what did you work on that you know you disagree / you would not like? What was different?
- what are you really excited about in this job, really?
- Live Coding - FizzBuzz with levels, nothing fancier.
- Let candidates use their own environment, sharing their screen.
- No algorithm, no tricks.
- Make candidates READ code. Online, together. Let them ask questions about the code.
- Prepare multiple followup questions, see how deep they could go.
- Two interviewers per session: one driver, one observer. The observer can be from another team/specification, but similar level to the driver. They are there to check the behaviour of both candidate and driver, and give feedback to a driver later on.
- Send an automated ‘this is what you should expect email’ with the boilerplate information about the company, department, team, role. Interviewers should not repeat these information ad infinitum in every interview, that makes them hate interviews
- bonus point for sending a video
- for not-senior positions, add some links about how to do good interviews, STAR methods. Good candidates who do not know how to interview might be interesting to discover.
- when interviewing, always take the first 4-5 minutes for yourself, do the talking, so the candidate can loosen up.
- Present shortly yourself
- acknowledge that interviewing is not easy (an anecdote from your past always helps)
- talk openly about the rules of the interview, here is my usual frame-setting-speech:
- It is ok if your internet gets slow/interrupted, camera breaks down, mouse stopped working…when we cannot solve it fast, we try to reschedule. Can also happen to me. No need to try to connect on some weird ways (send me your Skype link, where his my phone…) or finding disadvantageous setup for the interview. (obviously it is not ok if the candidate picked a setup where these thing could happen easily.)
- it is ok, if you are interrupted by the kid/wife/cat/neighbour/door. We can stop for 2-3 minutes, turn off the camera, instead of trying to ignore the interruption or manage it with your eyes or under the table. I might also get interrupted, I will do the same.
- I have two screen, sometimes I will look to the other one for your CV, my go-to questions, previous notes. You have my attention.
- I also write notes sometimes by hand, so you can see my head bend down, you have my attention.
- I might type things on my keyboard. I am not on the slack chatting about lunch, but probably taking notes or googling something. you have my attention.
- I have your CV here, point to relevant positions when needed, no need to go over starting from your high school.
- I apologise in advance for speaking over you, I do not communicate this way normally, but here, with limited time, I need to steer the conversation.
- Thinking loud helps, it lets me see how you think. Long pauses are not comfortable for me as well.
- Schedule the meeting for a variable time: 30min-60min. If you know you are not going the hire, cut the interview short. If you see the candidate is good, keep digging, so they can show how good they are and you can ‘guess’ their level better.
- Steer the conversation intentionally: When they are off-topic, talking about irrelevant points for too long, bring them back to the interview.
- If possible, send one/two feedback on HOW the rejected candidate have interviewed (talking too fast, confused, not listened to the questions, too nervous, sound was bad..) that is useful for their next interview.