Recruitment

Try and ensure the candidate is relaxed and confident. You want to see the best in the person, and it is hard to see that when they are nervous. Avoid making the interview excessively formal. Prefer the style of a friendly chat about common interests.

• Get them to talk about things they're passionate about. That helps to forget it's an interview and gives them confidence.

• Listen carefully not just for their direct answers/statements, but also what's behind what they're saying.

It is important to establish not just if someone is able to do the expected tasks, but also if they are keen to. Avoid asking for a particular attribute "Are you keen to work this way". Rather ask "What would you like to work on? What tasks do you enjoy?" and see if there is overlap.

Assessing competence

To get evidence of competence in a particular area, you can generally

• look for hard evidence

  • e.g. code written - perhaps on their github profile

  • e.g. public conversations like StackOverflow

• get them to talk about their experience, where this area is covered, and identify evidence here

  • Avoid hypotheticals, unless you're evaluating how they approach a problem - it's easy to say the right things. And even when assessing how they approach a problem, their reasoning in decisions made in practice is still better than a hypothetical.

• provide them with a task to complete

  • Preferably pay them (ideally something we want done anyway), and make sure the time they have available to complete it (e.g. after work) doesn't negatively impact the assessment

  • This works well for intermediate developers

  • We don't know how to do this with leadership positions yet