I am starting the tech team in my company, and I will be leading the tech interviews. I was going for some Leetcode based exercise + some theoretical questions + experience debrief. I was wondering if someone had good tips to share with me? To give you the context: I used to manage larger teams where it mattered less when we made a hiring mistake. Now I am in a start-up, and I am much more worried about the selection process because we are building the team from scratch.
Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#2Honestly, one of my favorite questions I used to ask was, "what is not on your resume/CV, which you want to highlight"? Always had interesting response, threw the person off and provided good insight into character, experience and sometimes side projects the candidate did not feel like highlighting in the application
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#3It 1000% depends on what kind of role you're hiring for and what your company does. I've never asked nor been asked a leetcode style question. I don't think they're useful for anyone building webapps or any other sort of line-of-business software. The handful of times I tried ended up being mishires anyway. I've worked at a few places with standard take-home coding assignments, and they were used to whittle candidates, but I'm not really clear on their value.
My tactic for a mid or jr dev is to poke into some specific things in their resume. They say they know JavaScript, then hit them with a bit of JavaScript trivia. Basic stuff that anyone who has worked in the language would answer in 2 seconds. Also some domain stuff, like if this is a web dev, then have them explain CORS or HTTPS. Then have them talk in detail about a specific project or two. Try to get them to articulate not just what the code does, but why that direction was chosen. Have them explain their role and the other roles and the project team to show they understand teamwork. Ask them how the estimate work. Try to elicit an opinion (PHP or Python, strict or loose typing, AWS or GCP) not to question their thinking, but rather to see that they can make qualitative arguments.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#4It 1000% depends on what kind of role you're hiring for and what your company does. I've never asked nor been asked a leetcode style question. I don't think they're useful for anyone building webapps or any other sort of line-of-business software. The handful of times I tried ended up being mishires anyway. I've worked at a few places with standard take-home coding assignments, and they were used to whittle candidate…
agreed with all the of the above - but also to add... get them to do something on their computer... this way you can see how well they know their tools... e.g. can they type on a keyboard... navigate etc... tells you a lot without asking...
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#5It 1000% depends on what kind of role you're hiring for and what your company does. I've never asked nor been asked a leetcode style question. I don't think they're useful for anyone building webapps or any other sort of line-of-business software. The handful of times I tried ended up being mishires anyway. I've worked at a few places with standard take-home coding assignments, and they were used to whittle candidate…
agreed with all the of the above - but also to add... get them to do something on their computer... this way you can see how well they know their tools... e.g. can they type on a keyboard... navigate etc... tells you a lot without asking...
I used to harshly judge anyone who didn't use the debugger in their IDE, but it turns out that it's most people.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#6It 1000% depends on what kind of role you're hiring for and what your company does. I've never asked nor been asked a leetcode style question. I don't think they're useful for anyone building webapps or any other sort of line-of-business software. The handful of times I tried ended up being mishires anyway. I've worked at a few places with standard take-home coding assignments, and they were used to whittle candidate…
Thanks very useful !
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#7I have worked at a small company where they would have candidates interview with almost everybody in the firm. I think that worked very well overall.
As a dev, I met with the dev team first, then with the business team, then with the operations team, then with the senior execs. Because I wasn’t in the same city, they had me interview remote first, and then on-site. Overall I think I met with 18 people.
Having that many people involved means that you will most certainly find out if the person is culturally suited to work in your startup. This is what matters for a small company. You really want to avoid the guys with bad attitude or culture mismatch.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#8Honestly, one of my favorite questions I used to ask was, "what is not on your resume/CV, which you want to highlight"? Always had interesting response, threw the person off and provided good insight into character, experience and sometimes side projects the candidate did not feel like highlighting in the application
This is nice!
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#9> I was going for some Leetcode based exercise
Oh no! Please! It helps neither the candidate nor the company. Will any of the leetcode exercises map to the job the candidate will be interviewing for?
My preferred way is this:
1. Introducing the candidate to all the team members with whom the candidate is going to work, if selected.
2. Pair programming with few of them on actual task or some similar task.
3. Solo programming on a problem that somewhat maps to one of the tasks the team is working on.
4. Asking the candidate to present the solution to the team on the whiteboard and candidate taking questions from them on the presented solution.
5. Vote from the team members on hire/no-hire decision.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have good tips for tech interviews?
#10> I was going for some Leetcode based exercise Oh no! Please! It helps neither the candidate nor the company. Will any of the leetcode exercises map to the job the candidate will be interviewing for? My preferred way is this: 1. Introducing the candidate to all the team members with whom the candidate is going to work, if selected. 2. Pair programming with few of them on actual task or some similar task. 3. Solo prog…
this is excellent advice ! it sounds much better indeed to have the candidate working on concrete problems we are trying to solve. Thanks