Interviewing

Interviewing

An interview's job is to gather evidence that predicts on-the-job success, fairly and consistently. Most interviews fail at this: they're unstructured chats that mostly measure how much the candidate resembles the interviewer. Structure is what turns opinion into signal, and it's also what makes interviews fairer.

Structure beats vibes

Decide, before the loop, what you're assessing and how you'll score it. Every candidate for a role gets the same core questions and the same rubric. Structured interviews are dramatically more predictive than unstructured ones and far less biased, because you compare candidates on the same evidence rather than on gut feel.

• Define the competencies the role needs (e.g. coding, system design, debugging, collaboration).
• Assign each competency to a specific interview so the loop has coverage, not overlap.
• Write a rubric with concrete behaviors for each level, agreed in advance.

Ask job-related, open questions

• Use realistic problems that resemble the actual work, not trivia, puzzles, or gotchas.
• Behavioral questions for past behavior ("Tell me about a time you disagreed with a technical decision, what did you do?"), then probe for specifics: what they did, not what "we" did.
• Prefer depth over breadth: one problem explored deeply reveals more than ten shallow ones.
• Calibrate difficulty to the level you're hiring for.

Run it well

• Let the candidate talk (aim ~80% them / 20% you); you're gathering evidence, not lecturing.
• Reduce anxiety: nervous people underperform in ways unrelated to the job. Be warm, set context, share the format up front.
• Give hints when someone is stuck; how they use a hint is strong signal, and it's more humane and more realistic than watching them flail.
• Take notes on what they said and did, in the moment, memory distorts fast and favors recency.

Score on evidence, then decide

• Rate against the rubric, citing specific things the candidate did, not "seemed smart" or "good culture fit" (a phrase that smuggles in bias).
• Assess for the role, not for similarity to you. "I'd grab a beer with them" is not a competency.
• Write a clear recommendation (strong hire / hire / no-hire / strong no-hire) with the evidence behind it. Wishy-washy write-ups waste the debrief.
• Submit before the debrief so you aren't anchored by louder voices (a decision-making failure mode, see the decision-making skill).

Fairness and the candidate experience

Every candidate is also a customer and a broadcaster of your brand. Be on time, prepared, and respectful; the same courtesy you'd want. Consistency in questions and rubric is not just accuracy, it's fairness.

Anti-patterns

• Unstructured "let's just chat" interviews with no rubric.
• "Culture fit" used to mean "like us", screen for values and collaboration, not sameness.
• Trivia, brain-teasers, and gotchas unrelated to the job.
• The interviewer talking most of the time.
• Deciding on gut feel, then back-filling justification.
• Reading other interviewers' scores before writing your own.
• Treating candidates as disposable, a bad experience costs you future hires.