Improve Interviews for Software Engineers

Most interview processes are a real disservice to the interviewee AND the company.

Typically, the team manager will just have his team members all interview the candidate. They will have no prep, no guidance, nothing. Just "interview this person and tell me your decision".

No one asks the candidate any questions relevant to the actual work the candidate will be expected to do on the job. It's mostly sorting algorithms and trick questions about regex etc. All stuff they encountered in CS101 and in THEIR interview 2 months before....

Interviews are about selecting someone who:

- is prepared

- has demonstrable working knowledge

- is motivated and feels challenged

- is a culture fit, or can influence the culture positively

I did not see any of these aspects in the article.

About the "Drop theoretical questions, put applied knowledge exercises instead"... be careful. An interview has limited time to form a perception.

Based on that perception you need to be able to rank candidates, and commit to an offer towards the ones that, according to that perception, did well. What you commit is usually some significant amount of money, as well as a lot of HR work for benefits, and sometimes even immigration stuff, relocation, etc. In addition, this decision will affect many of the day-to-day lives of your employees.

Then, you want to know how people react under pressure. Because chances are not every day will be an ideal day without pressure. So the happy time interview idea concept sucks, to be honest. If you are too easy you are exposing yourself to be stuck with an unwanted paycheck zombie bozo that bounced around from company to company.

Just apply rigor. Rigor is important.