The anatomy of the Perfect Technical Interview

Interviewers perspective

Resume:

Probe: Look for things to push candidates to explain in depth. Ask for examples.
Dig: Find out what candidate really contributed toward stated outcomes.
Differentiate: we vs I, good vs great, exposure vs expertise, participant vs owner/leader

Past Projects/Accomplishments with enough weight/depth for STAR questions:

Projects/teams important to company?

Interview Process (in order):

Intro

Introduce yourself and clearly state the goal for the interview.
Ask the person to introduce themself and give a few minutes about their interests and what excites them.

Hands-On Technical Questions

Examine candidate’s area of focus.
If coding, ask coding question based on their experience.
Dig into algs, data structures, code organization, simplicity.
Use some vague, open ended questions. See if they ask you questions to find out more.
Ask a design question, observe how candidate thinks about bigger picture problem.

Soft Skills, Community Fit Questions

Question Roseman asks everyone: “Do you consider yourself lucky?”
If I asked people you’ve worked with, what three adjectives would they use to describe you?
Follow up, for each: What are some examples of when you were [adjective]?

Interview Technical Questions Advice

Don’t ask a question you haven’t asked/tested before.
Entire team should sit down and discuss coding questions, answers, and which to use.
Multi-part questions, with extra requirements added after each successful answer, help identify candidate’s strength better than many unrelated questions.
Know (write down) in advance of asking question what a very good, good, poor, or very poor answer is and why.
For one-of-a-kind questions: ask about problems your company faces.
Want employees to ask questions, not sit in corner waiting for orders.
Create core competencies for company & make sure candidates measure up well.

Interview Advice

If you know candidate is no-go 15 minutes into interview, it is still important to get through full interview, to spread a positive image of interviewing at the company.
Peak-End Rule? Maybe ending with the hard technical question part creates a worse memory if it doesn’t go well, than starting with it and ending with a less intense background/soft skills questioning.
If candidate is a clear hire, selling the candidate on the position is critical.
Answer their questions and communicate your enthusiasm about the place & opportunity.

The Hiring Team

Shadowing before giving interviews.
Take exhaustive notes on candidate to ensure everyone can articulate thoughts about candidate.
After everyone on hiring team meets candidate, deliberate in person.
“What we do is put our votes in and then list in detail the questions we asked and the candidate’s answers. If someone is not inclined to hire them because of a pure technical question, then they should list the exact question they asked and the candidates code.”
He tells his hiring teams two things: 1) if they can’t provide comprehensive feedback, then they’ve wasted their own time, the company’s time and the candidate’s time; and 2) “If you get to the end of an interview and all you can say is ‘Yeah, I kind of liked them, I think they’d be good,’” then you’ve also wasted everyone’s time.
Placing emphasis on the opinions of people who will work with the new employee day in and day out is critical. He says, “no matter what, you never want to let a hiring manager override the group’s decisions. They have to be able to convince everyone, and not by fear.”
“The expectation is that the people you hire are better than when you were hired. So that in fact if you left and came back, you might not be hired again in that position. You want to improve your overall bar up with each hire. Another way to put it is every new hire should be better than your average current team member.”