[harisund]

I encourage juniors in my team to interview staff level engineers all the time.

A significant part of a staff level and higher engineer is mentoring. I am looking to you to help train the juniors.

If you appear intimidating, the juniors are not going to be comfortable reaching out to you for help. If you appear condescending, same effect.

I explicitly ask the juniors to not evaluate the candidate from a technical skills point of view. Obviously that's a waste of time and an insult to the senior person. Instead, I ask them to evaluate the candidate from a human perspective. Does the candidate use every opportunity to showcase his/ her seniority? Does the candidate put you at ease?