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Comment by vandyswa | Hacker News Reader

Insane. I could consistently sit in a room with a candidate for an hour, and at the end describe which positions they could handle, which would be a stretch, and which would be a fiasco. I ended up being a bit of a candidate whisperer.

But the truth is simply that if you speak clearly and listen closely, you'll learn more than enough in an hour. All this madness is to avoid developing these important skills. It's sad.

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Same here.

It's also important to set the tone from the start of the interview, that what's wanted is pretty candid, genuine discussion between colleagues.

Otherwise, people so conditioned to the conventional BS interview rituals might do that mode. Which is absolutely not what you'd want from an engineering colleague. And BS mode in interview context makes it harder to see what they'd be like to work with, and raises the question of why they're doing that mode. (IME, most people seem to get the desired tone instantly, or within moments.)

Agreed, i spend a couple minutes verifying their resume through fizz buzz type questions. Then figure out how they react when they don’t know something. Make sure they can collaborate. At this point you get a decent idea of how that person fits, or doesn’t. It really only takes 20 minutes of tech questions and 10 of shooting the shit. Pro-tip for getting hired with most interviewers is to get them to do most of the talking and parrot back what they say they want.

Yep, it doesn't take all that much work to size up a candidate and whether you can work together. You can get a good feel for them just by having a chat like normal people. Maximum half hour.

You do introduce bias but everyone prefers a quick hour instead of 5 layers of nonsense.

Agreed, it's difficult not to impart your own preferences on the process but most people appreciate avoiding the rigmarole.

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