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by titusjohnson 849 days ago
Over the last decade+ I've been involved in the hiring process at every company I've been an employee at. I've either been a key technical interviewer, or the hiring manager. I would be able to pass all my interviews, and I'm pleased to say that (with one exception) all of my hires have succeeded in their roles. I have a very straightforward process.

- Look at every resume, pass/fail fast. Ask the Recruiter or HR to give you more resumes, not less (they typically are not equipped to assess techncal resumes)

- 15 minute phone screen. Make sure the role fits expectations, make sure the salary range is acceptable, get and give a verbal background.

- At-home code task. Something that takes an hour or so to get functional. More if the interviewee wants to put some spit-shine on it. I ask for a git repo back, and I tell the applicant up front that the code will be used to springboard the technical interview.

- 2 hour technical interview, no live-coding. In person or virtual. This involves other engineers from the org -- we code review the git repo. For each code task I have a set of 3/4 "Product Manager" style enhancement requests, we then verbally talk through the technical changes & challenges for each ask.

- 15 minute chat with the CT or VP or whomever is my boss.

- Extend an offer.

It's all very real, and very pragmatic, and shouldn't suck more than 4-6 hours out of an applicants life, total. I want to be able to extend an offer within days, assuming everyone's schedule aligns. There is 0 reason to go deeper. If you cannot asses someone's technical chops in a 2 hour conversation, you shouldn't be involved in hiring. If you couldn't complete the coding challenges to your own satisfaction, you shouldn't be involved in hiring (there are engineers I've worked with who are no longer involved in hiring due to unneeded pedantry that they themselves would not tolerate if the shoe was on the other foot).

1 comments

Just thinking about all the roles I’ve interviewed for across from someone with 2 yoe asking a version of an A* algorithm implementation for web development.

Sounds like a decent place!