Tech Interviews: Respect Everyone's Time
A lot has been written about how to perform technical interviews. What questions to ask, what questions not to ask, why the questions we used to ask are bad. I have nothing of value to add to that debate.1
What I do have to add is one guiding principle for the interviewing company: Do not waste anyone’s time!
Do not waste the time of the candidate by making them jump through endless hoops. Do not waste the time of your own people (the ones performing the interview) by losing candidates due to poor communication. To this end, I have two simple pieces of advice that very few of the companies I have interviewed with have followed.
Structure: Just Enough
A few companies I have interviewed with have had labyrinthine processes such as:
- multiple phone screens
- multiple days of on-site interview loops
- phone screens as well as take-home projects
Instead of utilizing such protracted methods, ask what you hope to learn with a second interview (or phone screen, or data challenge) that you failed to learn the first time, and then figure out how to learn that key piece of information in just one round.
I think the following steps are enough:
- Resume screen (performed without the candidate)
- Casual chat with the candidate about the position
- Technical screen
- On-site interview loop
Communicate: Often
The vast majority of companies follow poor communication practices during the hiring process. Often, there are long periods of silence followed by unpredictable bursts of noise. Worse, some companies simply stop communicating altogether! The companies that offered the best experience had recruiters who stayed in constant contact, and who set appointments and kept them. The absolute best even scheduled the post on-site interview loop feedback (and hiring decision) phone call at the same time they gave me the schedule for the on-site itself. I very much appreciated knowing that I would know the outcome at a set time in the future.
Improving communication during the hiring process is simple. Communicate before each step in the hiring process and let the candidate know what to expect. Then communicate after each step and let the candidate know whether or not they are continuing in the hiring process. Ideally, schedule these interactions ahead of time so there is no doubt as to when they will happen. This gives the candidate a fixed date on which they will have an answer, and gives a deadline to the hiring team to make a decision.
That’s It
It is tough to hire, but it is not tough to be better at structuring interviews. Respect the time of all parties involved and you will be well on your way to a better experience for the candidates and the interviewers.
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If that is what you’d like though, I think Li Haoyi’s How to conduct a good Programming Interview is pretty good. ↩