Mastering the Art of the Technical Interview

Technical interviews are broken. We all know the horror stories: whiteboard coding challenges that have nothing to do with the actual job, interviewers who care more about "gotcha" questions than understanding a candidate's thought process, and a complete lack of standardization.

As engineering leaders, we have a responsibility to fix this.

The Goal of an Interview

The goal is not to prove how smart you are as an interviewer. The goal is to gather signal on whether the candidate can do the job and thrive in your team's environment.

1. Ditch the LeetCode Grind

Unless you are hiring for a role that specifically requires implementing complex algorithms from scratch (which is rare), stop asking candidates to invert binary trees on a whiteboard. Instead, focus on practical problems.

• "Design a simple API for a todo app."
• "Debug this piece of code that has a race condition."
• "Walk me through a difficult technical decision you made recently."

2. Structured Interviewing

Bias creeps in when we wing it. Use a structured rubric for every interview. Ask every candidate the same core questions and score them against defined criteria.

3. The "User Manual" Approach

Treat the interview as a collaborative session. Give the candidate a brief of what to expect beforehand. Let them use their own IDE. Let them Google things. In the real world, we look things up all the time. Why penalize it in an interview?

By making the process more human and more relevant to the actual work, you'll not only hire better engineers but also leave every candidate with a positive impression of your company.