The first bit of advice I have for conducting interviews is prepare, prepare, prepare. So what do I mean by this? Well, I think we’ve probably all been the recipient of a poorly prepared interviewer. They skim your CV in the meeting itself, the conversation doesn’t really flow or go very deep, and the impression the candidate gets is pretty poor. Remember, these candidates have spent a few hours on your company already, preparing a CV/Résumé, writing a cover letter, prepping for an interview, etc, so how much disrespect have you shown them by not doing some prep? A lot.
Thirty minutes is all it takes, and it revolves around what they present. Their CV/Résumé, cover letter, portfolio (GitHub, Blog, etc). Go through all of these, find tidbits that interest you, prepare a list of leading questions to learn more about these things. Examples: “You mention here you scaled the platform at company X from 1,000 to 1,000,000 users? What sort of bottlenecks did you find and fix? Because here we found….” or “I see here you launched an app to the app store, tell me what you did for marketing and launch week?” This is the time where you can really find out from the candidate if they have the skills or experience you’re after for the role.
Heads up: As with any terse bit of advice, there will be exceptions of course, and subtleties and nuance that can't possibly be captured in a Byte of Wisdom. This has been what I've experienced, I'd love to hear yours in the comments too!
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