An alternative for tech interview process
Many feel that current interview process is almost worthless and the only guarantee it provides is you are not hiring worst of the worst. Also, within a hiring company hardly any employee is an expert interviewer and there is no standard criterion, which makes the process even more useless. Hiring team wastes time in going through tonnes of candidates and candidates waste time in preparing differently for different companies. Maybe following can be an alternative-
1. The hiring team should only do culture and personality fit, which will be the last phase.
2. One or two interview for above should be sufficient, could even be one-to-many type interview.
3. A 3rd-party company should bear the burden of technical interviewing.
4. Anyways, everyone asks similar questions so doesn’t matter who asks it but having specialized company interview for various tech companies will ensure certain level of consistency.
5. Since this 3rd-party will focus just on technical interviewing skills/process, it will become expert in this domain.
6. Taking it further, the interview could be SAT/GRE type score, valid for certain duration (3-6 months). Take the test, apply to various companies at your own pace.
7. Such standardized score could also help reduce size of target company, further saving candidate's time.
8. May be candidate can opt for in-person interview and still get standardized score.
9. Since 3rd-party has no other thing but to interview, it should be able to provide whole gamut of options - in-person, online, whiteboard, with IDE, with vim, specialty topics, pick-your-own topics, etc. Hiring company set their criteria, candidates set their own and someone finds a match.