How to prepare your team for technical interviews and tests

Interviewing is not a natural skill. It requires learning and practice.

You might hear that anyone can interview another person. The reality is they cannot.

Interviewing well is an art that requires training, feedback, and lots of practice.

Surely in your career, you've been interviewed by people who wouldn't let you speak, who didn't tell you if you had done well or poorly, or who had no interest in learning about you and your skills. That person didn't know how to interview you, right? Well, there are many people like that because interviewing is not taught.

And being a good software developer does not imply that you know how to evaluate talent. Because you don't necessarily know how to detect if the skills of the person in front of you are what the role you are looking for needs.

Added to this is that most technical interviews are not well planned: there is usually no set of structured questions, nor an evaluation template to record or score the person's knowledge. This means that each person who interviews evaluates different things.

When there is no shared criteria, inconsistent decisions occur. And that is what you want to avoid at all costs in a company. You don't want the decision of who gets hired to be based on a feeling, but on an established criterion.

These poorly founded decisions lead to bad hires, good candidates being rejected, or poor experiences that damage the company's employer brand.

Interviewing is a strategic responsibility.

Before training the team, define exactly what you are evaluating.

If I don't know what needs to be evaluated, the training you give me won't matter.

Therefore, it is essential to establish beforehand what type of profile we are looking for and what qualities they should have. And I am not just talking about mastering one stack or another, but about those that are not so easy to evaluate with a technical test.

What “Good Profile” means in your context

If it is not written down and detailed, it is quite impossible for everyone to know how to recognize the skills being sought.

Therefore, you should define some basic things before starting to evaluate candidates.

• What level of autonomy do you expect? Beyond labeling a position as junior, mid, or senior, you must be clear whether this person will be able to hit the ground running or if they will need mentoring and leadership.
• What capacity for solution design should they have? Should they be able to land a complex problem into a technical solution? Or is that not part of their job?
• What quality of code is expected? Is it something they should bring with them or can they learn it internally?
• What communication should they have?
• Is it necessary for them to have a product mindset or not?

In addition to having an answer to all these questions, it would be good to define ambiguous terms. Like what it means to have good communication or a product mindset.

Defining what interviewers should look for in candidates is the first step towards a good hire. Not everyone understands what a “good profile” is in the same way. So make it easy for them.

What you should not evaluate

You should always avoid, as much as possible, judgments of opinion: “I like them,” “they look like so-and-so,” “they have similar experience to this person.”

Comparisons are a tool (or a shortcut) that your brain uses to find an easy path to the familiar. Each person is different and contributes different things. Try to evaluate objectively.

Candidates also have their rehearsed answers that they know interviewers like. If the person does not go into detail, take common phrases and memorized answers with a grain of salt. No matter how much they say they always apply TDD, ask for real examples and experiences.

Avoid biases. The best way to do this is by having a structured interview and not letting yourself be impressed. Here is a guide on how to avoid biases in selection processes.

Evaluate with a shared scorecard

Create a prototype of the profile you are looking for. Use a numerical scale. I don't care if it's 1 to 4. 1 to 10. Whatever you like best.

Create a card with:

• Technical skills to evaluate
• Soft skills
• Cultural fit
• Interviewer's summary

If you don't know how to design a scorecard, we leave you an article where we explain it in detail and you have templates in Google Docs and Notion that you can adapt: how to design a scorecard.

How to prepare your team for technical interviews

The most important thing is that they understand their role. But they also need to understand the company context: what role we are filling, what stage the company is at, what skills we are looking for exactly, and what weight their evaluation carries.

Not providing this context means that each person evaluates different things.

Define the role of each interviewer

Not everyone should ask the same questions. Some evaluate soft skills, some validate the technical part, and others evaluate cultural fit.

Everyone with a clear focus. That is why it is important that different profiles from the company participate in the selection process. From someone in Human Resources, someone in product, or a manager.

Train how to ask questions and how to interview

Many people interview by interrupting, give hints too quickly when asking complex questions, or make each interview feel like an exam with right and wrong answers.

You should never talk more than the candidate. Your job is to obtain the maximum information possible from each person. And that is only possible if you let them speak.

Some interviewing tips:

• Ask open-ended questions. Without a correct answer. Questions that require reflection.
• Learn to delve deeper without guiding. Re-ask. Investigate. Ask for details.
• How to detect structured thinking. Ask several questions at once. Observe if they break down the most open-ended questions into process, points, pros and cons, or if they are a clear and concise person.
• How to manage silence. Silence is not a problem. Silence helps the other person want to fill it by talking. Allow time for the person to answer, think, and reflect.

One piece of advice we always give is that anyone starting to interview should do a couple of practice sessions beforehand with more veteran colleagues who can spot improvements in conducting the interview or asking questions. One hour of practice one week is a lesson for life.

How to evaluate technical tests while avoiding biases

Define the evaluation criteria before seeing the test. What we score and how much.

Evaluate the reasoning and process that led to the solution, not just the result. Keep in mind that doing a technical test has nothing to do with day-to-day work and team dynamics.

Understand the person in front of you well. Differentiate clearly between technical level, experience level, and clarity of the solution. Evaluating a junior person is not the same as someone you are going to pay €70K.

Avoid comparisons between candidates. Everyone will have some good points and others not so much, but they are not the same. Evaluate against your standard. Against the model person you are looking for. (evaluate against the standard, not against each other).

If you don't know how to do technical tests well, we have created a simple guide so you don't get confused: Learn how to do good technical interviews according to your objective.

How to align the team after interviews

Once the interviews have been conducted, the feedback from each person who participated in the process must be shared.

Structured feedback. How to collect interview information.

Write everything. What is not written is NOT valid. Everything written is based on the competencies we have described in the scorecards, not on feelings.

Each person writes and saves the feedback after each interview.

In the review, each person presents their vision. And if there are doubts or disagreements, force them to give concrete examples. "I remember they said something like that..." is not enough.

Do not decide impulsively

It seems very obvious, but do not give a yes or a no immediately after each interview. Avoid "I see it" or "I don't see it." Review the structured feedback once the process is finished.

Of course, if something clearly doesn't fit and it's a definitive NO, there's no need to continue with the process. But we all have a slip-up or a bad interview. In the next one, they might seem amazing.

How to detect that your team is NOT ready to interview

There are several “red flags” that help you see that your team needs interview training.

• There are no written criteria on what to evaluate. There are requirements in a job offer, but no one has stopped to think about how candidates are evaluated.
• Feedback after interviews is a poorly written single line. If no one knows how to give interview feedback, you have a problem.
• The same questions are always repeated, and there is no differentiation between roles or experience.
• “Feeling” is valued more than evidence. If there are many expressions about a lack of fit, but there is no objective evidence, your team is valuing feelings.

Here are 7 common interviewing mistakes and how to avoid them.

How to create a culture of professional interviewers

• One of the most important things that people in your company need to understand is that interviewing is part of the senior role. And that helping the company grow by hiring good profiles for the team is important.
• Even if everyone thinks they conduct perfect interviews, train the interviewers. Teach them to give and receive feedback. Have them write and document feedback and learnings after each process.
• Periodically review the selection process. Roles change, companies change. The hiring process should too.
• Create a focus within the team on giving useful feedback to candidates.

Some metrics you can use to create this culture of excellence.

• Quality of hire. Assign a score 6 months after hiring on how well the profile fits what the team needed.
• Offer acceptance/rejection rate. Measure how many people accept your offer and how many reject it. A rejection rate above 20% indicates a problem. It could be low salary, required in-office presence, or that the selection process was a disaster.
• Candidate experience. This is one of the best practices you can create to build this culture of excellence. An Interview NPS. Automate a small form after each interview in which the interviewee can score the process, the interviewer, or the culture.

Your interview process is an x-ray of the company's culture and your technical culture. It is possible that, as a hiring manager, you do not have the capacity to change the entire company culture. But you can control what your selection process is like and its quality. It is up to you whether the people participating in interviews are prepared to detect the best talent or to let it pass by.