The Trickiest Part of Effective Technical Interview

Why is it important and how to deal with it

Have you ever been bothered with the following questions?

Does this guy understand what does he talking about? Or is he just trying to fool me with his expertise?

I face these questions a couple of times every week. One part of my job is to interview candidates for software engineer positions.

A potential candidate may join my team. He gonna affect its culture and performance. So the question about the candidate’s real professional skills and personal qualities is freaking crucial.

Unfortunately, it’s a tricky moment. You only get to know the person well enough after some time has passed, after completing the first dozen tasks and handling the first crisis side by side.

So it’s almost impossible to check the soft skills with 100% assurance. Still, there are some red flags you need to watch.

Luckily, the situation with the technical part is better. You can ask some technical questions and receive the answers. But there are nuances.

First of all, there is always not enough time to ask everything you want. The best you can do while interviewing a candidate is to check your knowledge of your project stack. Maybe you can even discuss a little about the basics of the development process and paradigm you gonna use. No more.

The second issue is that talking is not the same as coding.

The theory is important but not as much as practical knowledge.

In the end, the developer gonna receive a salary for the development — writing the code. Alas, you can’t judge the coding skills only by the candidate’s words.

Technical Solution

Some companies use technical tasks. Well, they suck…

The typical technical task requires you to code 3+ hours. You need to create or pull the project. Then do a lot of other time-consuming stuff. It’s annoying.

Also, candidates can cheat while performing a technical task. Ask for help or google that exact task. There is nothing wrong with using Google while working, but it kills the point of such code challenges.

Checking the quality of the technical task is also problematic and subjective. The idea behind code is more important than the code itself. The actual value of a developer is the ability to solve problems. Without communication, it’s complex to understand the intention and mind flow. So this way wastes the time of both candidate and the tech interviewer.

It’s a simply ineffective way to check someone’s expertise.

So What to Do?

No worries — there is a way out of that dead-end. It’s live coding.

What can show the level of coding better than the coding itself?

Usually, a live coding session is part of a technical interview. It doesn’t take more than 20–30 minutes to solve 2–3 code challenges.

The main reason I love it so much is that it exposes the candidate’s mind. You see in real-time how does he think. In the best case, the candidate will code and explain his actions aloud in parallel.

The crucial moment here is the connection between the candidate and interviewer. They communicate and ask questions. This process is pretty similar to actual development.

There is no need for complex tasks that require deep math knowledge or a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

95% of work in the IT sphere is not related to graph theory or complex numbers.

It’s enough to ask a candidate to perform a simple task in real-time. Reverse an array on his own. Draw some weird sequence in the console. Write his own stack or query. Something that fits the complexity of the everyday task.

How to Complete

The key for a candidate at live coding is to show the agility of his mind. You need to ask the questions and propose solutions.

It’s critical to interact with the interviewer. Your questions and reactions will be evaluated at this stage. Show confidence and skill.

There is no need to complete the task in 2 minutes or on the first try. However, it could be a bonus.

There shouldn’t be any pressure, and you shouldn’t worry a lot. Complete the task and demonstrate your ability to do it.

In the real world, the deadlines will create even more stress than a tech interview. So it’s nice to be prepared in advance.

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